September 25th, 2008

Pennsylvania’s hospitals saw declining death rates for 25 different procedures and conditions over the past four years, according to a medical report issued yesterday by the Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council (PHC4).

An article by the Associated Press details that overall patient death rates have fallen from 4.6 percent in 2004 to 4.2 in 2007.   Readmission rates, on the other hand, just slightly increased over a three year period.

“The linkage between the significant decline in mortality rates and the slight increase in readmission rates reflects the fact that the quality of care hospitals provide is saving more lives than ever,” said Carolyn F. Scanlan, president and chief executive officer of the Hospital & Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania. “However, many of those surviving patients are the most chronically ill — and therefore most in need of continuing hospital care.”

PHC4 has been suffering from political tug-of-war between the Gov. and House Democrats and the Senate Republicans as they continue to disagree on their health care reform plans for the uninsured.  Both sides have refused to reauthorize PHC4 until there is some movement on what they want done.  The Council was temporarily reauthorized this summer by an executive order, which expires on Nov. 30th.