A new federal report says that fewer patients died because of hospital-acquired conditions after the Affordable Care Act was enacted, and hospitals saved more than $28 billion in healthcare costs during the period covered in the report as a result of the progress in combating these illnesses.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services credits the 21 percent decline in hospital-acquired infections in part to the Affordable Care Act.
The report, “National Scorecard on Rates of Hospital-Acquired Conditions,” by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, finds that about 125,000 fewer patients died as a result of these conditions during 2010 to 2015. In total, hospital patients had more than 3 million fewer hospital-acquired conditions, such as adverse drug events, catheter-associated urinary-tract infections, central-line-associated bloodstream infections, pressure ulcers and surgical-site infections, during that period.
To read the report, please hit this link.
To read the FierceHealthcare analysis of it, please hit this link.
