Fifty-three Ohio hospitals have cut their rate of bloodstream infections from central-line catheters by 48 percent in the first six months of a two-year nationwide effort to improve patient safety, according to the Ohio Hospital Association.
The association and the Ohio Patient Safety Institute launched the Ohio effort — On The CUSP: Stop BSI (bloodstream infections) — in October as one of 10 states selected by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Hospitals involved in the state program and their national leaders are sharing congratulations and best practices at a meeting in Cleveland today.
Through the program, participating hospitals in Ohio achieved the national safety benchmark of less than one infection per 1,000 catheter days. That is especially notable in light of the AHRQ’s 2009 national healthcare quality report to Congress, which stated that rates of healthcare-associated infections are rising, not falling.
“Ohio joins a growing group of states that have demonstrated that with leadership, transparency and collaboration, we can save lives and save dollars,” said Dr. Peter Provonost, a Johns Hopkins doctor who helped create guidelines for the national program, in a press release. “Ohio is to be applauded. The hospitals had previously made efforts to improve safety yet they had the courage to admit that they could do better — and they have.”
An estimated 250,000 bloodstream infections from central-line catheters occur in U.S. hospitals each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those infections cost $25,000 per episode.
CUSP — short for Comprehensive Unit-Based Safety Program — was developed by Provonost and others at the Johns Hopkins Quality & Safety Research Group along with the Keystone Center for Patient Safety and Quality of the Michigan Health & Hospital Association to reduce the nationwide infection rate. The project was piloted in Michigan where hospitals saved 1,200 lives and $175 million in costs per year.
U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Avon Lake, worked on behalf of the Ohio Patient Safety Institute to get $190,000 in federal funding beyond what the AHRQ was offering for the program, the Ohio Hospital association said.
