Ensure a safe hospital stay

Choose experience and safety

No one likes going to hospitals, but when you need to schedule a procedure or you have an emergency, choosing a safe hospital and making sure you have a safe stay is critical to your health and your recovery.

And just because a hospital looks sterile and seems efficient, doesn't mean it is. "Hospitals are dangerous places" where patients can pick up life-threatening infections, notes Elliott S. Fisher, M.D., M.P.H., Director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Care Policy and Clinical Practice. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that roughly 5 percent of all patients admitted to a hospital will contract a preventable infection during their stay, and nearly 100,000 will die from a hospital infection. Many experts believe the numbers are much higher than previous estimates. And hospital infections aren't the only safety problem. One out of four American families experiences significant medical errors, many of them in the hospital setting. According to a recent study of Medicare patient records, patient safety incidents resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths from 2004-2006. But patients treated at the best hospitals had a 43 percent lower chance of experiencing medical errors than those in the poorest-performing hospitals.

The good news, however, is that more and more hospitals are trying to improve their safety records, and there's a lot you can do to select the right hospital, and to monitor your safety while you're there.

If you've just learned that you need surgery or you're preparing for a hospital-based procedure, you're probably searching for the best doctor covered by your insurance plan, but you should also be researching the safest and best hospital for your care.

• Choose the best doctors and surgeons covered by your health plan.
• Find out their hospital affiliations.
• Research which of the hospitals in your area are rated highest for their expertise and safety.

"It isn't just the surgeon that's very important, a surgeon doesn't operate in a vacuum, but rather in a team environment and they are all essential and need experience," says Leah Binder, CEO of the Leapfrog Group, a non-profit organization that promotes health care safety. Find out how experienced a hospital is in performing the procedure you need, and be sure that the hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations.

The US Department of Health and Human Services Hospital Compare Web site provides a nationwide overview of health care institutions and compares the quality of hospitals based on three clinical conditions: heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia; and, surgical infection prevention. It's a good place to find out how your local hospitals are rated for performance and safety. The Leapfrog Group provides information on over 1,300 hospitals nationwide, and bases its surveys and ratings on four quality and safety practices shown to reduce unnecessary deaths and injuries-from the use of use computers to order medications, tests and procedures to adherence to 27 safe practice procedures shown to reduce preventable medical mistakes.

Be on the lookout for information on volume and outcomes for the procedure you are going to have. Try to avoid hospitals with little experience and poor results, or with higher death or complication rates compared to others. Other important criteria include hospital infection rates, and nurse-to-patient ratio.

And if you're preparing to have a baby, "You want to make sure that your ob-gyn or midwife is affiliated with a hospital you feel good about," says Binder, who recommends that you take a tour of the hospital, and review their safety record.