Physicians at The Johns Hopkins Hospital (JHH) have disproved the notion that longer hospital stays mean better care. They have successfully cut back on wait times across one dozen hospital departments and, as a result, reduced to well below six the average number of days patients with congestive heart failure, a need for dialysis or surgery, and many other conditions must spend in the hospital.

From the outset, the Hopkins program was designed to improve patient care and cut down on wait times. According to statistics released today by the hospital, the program has led to a 4 percent decrease in the overall amount of time patients have to spend in any one of the hospital's 850 acute-care beds. On average, inpatients are spending a quarter of a day less waiting for their procedures, and the average hospital stay has been reduced from 5.93 days in 2002 to 5.7 days in 2005. This savings is equivalent to having added 26 new beds to the hospital.

And the denial rate for Hopkins by health insurers, who do not always agree to pay for days spent in the hospital that cannot be justified, has also declined. In 2001, Hopkins' denial rate was 2.08 days for every 100 patient days claimed in submissions to insurers. In 2003 and, again, in 2004, the rate fell to 1.85 days.

On its own, the hospital's Department of Medicine, which initiated the program, expects to decrease the waiting time for its 220 beds, representing 20 percent of all JHH beds, and thereby allowing it to see 14,000 patient admissions in 2005, 500 more than in 2004 and 2,200 more than in 2001.

Specifically, in the last year, the data-driven program has led to 78 percent of the department's admissions to acute-care beds doing better than nationally published industry standards for length of stay for a variety of specific diagnoses.

"Our results show that there is room for improvement in the way large teaching hospitals deliver high-quality care and that they can
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Contact: David March
dmarch1@jhmi.edu
410-955-1534
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions
19-Sep-2005

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