US Health Care System Wastes $750B a Year

The Institute of Medicine, an arm of the National Academy of Sciences, just released a report more than 18 months in the making.  They conclude that over $750 Billion is wasted every year "through unneeded care, byzantine paperwork, fraud and other waste."

They assign $55B of the $750B to "Prevention Failures".  Failure to prevent pressure ulcers must be a very large part of this.  In fact, the NDF completed a study several years ago that found the failure to prevent pressure ulcers alone was costing $50 Billion annually.  And we now know that prevention is, for the most part, straightforward by implementation of the NDF Prevention Protocol.  Assess the risk for every admitted patient usong the Braden Scale, and assign each high risk patient to a proven pressure-relieving support surface. With potential savings so great, we don't understand why every hospital does not make the required investment.

Consumer Reports - August 2012

The current issue of Consumer Reports contains a major article on hospital safety.  They list "8 things that should never happen in a hospital"  and number one on the list is Bedsores.  They state that their attempts to rate hospitals are hampered by a lack of disclosure:

"Still, our Ratings include only 18 percent of U.S. hospitals because data on patient harm still isn’t reported fully or consistently nationwide. “Hospitals that volunteer safety information, regardless of their score, deserve credit, since the first step in safety is accountability,” says John Santa, M.D., director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. “But the fact that consumers can’t get a full picture of most hospitals in the U.S. underscores the need for more public reporting."

This is confirmation the NDF decision to emphasize state by state requiring of the reporting of hospital errors is on the right track.

Focus on Disclosure

For the forseeable future, the focus of NDF efforts to eradicate hospital-caused pressure ulcers will be on disclosure.  Many states now require that hospitals disclose medical errors, including Stage III and IV pressure ulcers.  The NDF will urge all states to enact strong disclosure requirements, and will work to ensure that these requirements have real "teeth" in the form of serious fines for failure to report or for incomplete reports.

The NDF website features one state each month to highlight disclosure status and hospital performance (if available).  Visitors are asked to contact the poorest performing hospitals to insist that they adopt the NDF Prevention Protocol.

Bedsores Avoided by the NDF Prevention Protocol

The groundbreaking NDF findings that led to the NDF Prevention Protocol were first submitted in 2006 and distributed to reviewers.  Since that time there have been many published reports of hospitals that have adopted the essential elements of the protocol.  In every case, pressure ulcer incidence has plummeted.  It is therefore now possible to document the bedsores avoided and the lives saved by the NDF Prevention Protocol.  This will result in a low estimate because it is based on only published reports.  We will publish these findings on the NDF webpage and update them periodically.

Revised Website

The NDF website has been renamed http://www.endbedsores.org/.  We will redesign the site to go along with the change in name.  The primary audience is the multitude of victims of hospital bedsores, both those afflicted and the loved ones of those afflicted.  The initial impact will be designed to welcome the visitor who has now found a community of victims with which he or she will be able to accomplish something through joint action. 

Those who recognize that they have found what they have so long sought will be asked to join forces in a meaningful way by first making a contribution, and pledging continued financial support.  All will be asked to become active by investigating what their own state is doing to require hospital reporting of pressure ulcer medical errors, and by exposing those hospitals that are causing patient suffering and death.

Each month the home page will be dedicated to the investigation of a single state, followed by action to urge the state to require hopital reporting of pressure ulcer errors to match the very best states.  This constatntly changing useful content of the website should result in improved search engine ranking.

First page prominence will also be given to those hospitals that have eliminated bedsores through adoption of the NDF Prevention Protocol.  A logo containing those words will be designed to clearly brand the NDF as the authority for bedsore prevention.

New Name for Website

The National Decubitus Foundation has changed the name of its website from http://www.decubitus.org/ to http://www.endbedsores.org/.  We believe this change will allow more users to find our information when they search under "bedsores", a much more likely search than "decubitus".  The NDF email address has also changed from info@decubitus.org to info@endbedsores.org.

Momentum is Building

With the revelation that the specialized support surface market was over $2 billion in 2011, and that it is growing fast, it is clear that more and more hospitals are making the required investment in pressure ulcer prevention.  Forty states now have requirements that hospitals report publicly the occurrence of medical errors, including Stage 3 and 4 pressure ulcers.  The NDF plans to do its part in aiding this trend, including a completely redesigned website and a new emphasis on fundraising.  Funds are needed to allow the NDF to accomplish its goal of public education regarding the extent and severity of the pressure ulcer problem in our hospitals.