Can Hospitalization-Associated Disability Be Prevented?

According to a report by the Office of the Inspector General, 7.4% of Medicare beneficiaries who were hospitalized in 2008 experienced a preventable adverse event. To improve the quality and safety of hospital care, Congress has enacted several broad programs that mandate reporting of quality, safety, patient experience, and adverse events and that provide financial incentives to improve performance. Here, Ettinger narrates that the new onset of disability as part of hospitalization is common and has a major effect on the quality of life and independence of older patients and health- related expenditures. Moreover, the first step to increasing the number of older patients who leave the hospital independent rather than disabled is to systematically measure health-related quality of life and disability outcomes and to report the results publicly. Moreover, hospitals and health systems should voluntarily work together to test improvement programs and share best practices and outcomes of interventions.