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Over the past six months, the AHA and its data partners have produced two comprehensive reports that document the progress hospitals and health systems continue to make on key patient safety measures.

In September 2024, the AHA partnered with Vizient on a report showing that numerous outcome measures of health care quality and patient safety — including decreasing risk of mortality and lower levels of health care-associated infections — are improving while hospitals care for more patients with significant health needs.

Meanwhile, the newly released Insights Report, “Improvement in Safety Culture Linked to Better Patient and Staff Outcomes,” highlights progress on additional outcome measures of patient safety including some that reflect the ongoing work led by nurses to protect patients.

The latest report, created in collaboration between the AHA and Press Ganey, shows clear improvement on the experience of both patients and the health care workforce. It also shows improvements in safety culture, a leading indicator of better safety outcomes and better experiences for patients and staff.

4 Takeaways from the New Data

1 | 4 key quality and safety areas are improving.

Hospitals are performing at or better than prepandemic levels on multiple quality and safety measures, according to the March report. The findings are based on the Press Ganey National Database Quality Indicators reflecting quality measures reported by more than 25,000 units across 2,430 acute care inpatient hospitals. The data show improvements from their mid-pandemic levels in four key measurement areas:

• Catheter-associated urinary tract infections
• Central line-associated bloodstream infections.
• Patient falls that result in harm.
• The number of patients who develop hospital-acquired pressure injuries such as bedsores.

2 | Patient experience and safety improvements are being noticed.

The report’s data, based on responses from 13 million patients, show steady gains in their experience of care and their perceived safety of care after a drop during the COVID-19 pandemic. Drivers of these improvements include patient perception of good teamwork among staff, attention and responsiveness to patient needs and communication among patients and clinical care team members.

3 | Patients are attuned to team dynamics and interpersonal competencies.

One key factor driving improvements in patients’ perceptions of care is the teamwork of their caregivers. Across clinical areas — inpatient and outpatient, surgical and medical, emergency and scheduled — the single largest driver of a patient’s likelihood to recommend a hospital, facility or provider is the perception of how well their care team members work together, the report notes. Better teamwork has long been shown to drive better outcomes.

Similarly, patients who perceive that their care was safe are 2.5 to 3 times more likely to recommend their hospital to others. Their perceptions of safety are based on their own interactions with hospital team members, their observations regarding practices such as handwashing and cleanliness, and how they see team members interacting with one another to deliver care.

4 | Workforce experience and well-being are improving.

As the enormous strain of the COVID-19 pandemic recedes, the health care workforce is beginning to rebound as well. Press Ganey data from 1.7 million health care workforce members show a rise in their resiliency and perceived work experiences. A resilient workforce is essential in health care, given the complex and high stakes nature of the work.

Hospitals that score higher on team member engagement surveys also see higher patient experience scores reported from patients. This correlation is becoming more pronounced every year, with the top-performing quartile of hospitals on staff engagement in 2023 scoring in the 80th percentile on patients’ likelihood to recommend.

Learn More

A key goal of the AHA’s Patient Safety Initiative is to help hospitals and health systems improve their safety culture. Launched in 2023, the initiative catalyzes hospitals’ and health systems’ collective expertise and momentum for improvement and focuses on (1) safety culture, (2) identifying and addressing disparities in health care outcomes and (3) the workforce’s well-being.