In the news: Joint Commission's Annual Report on Quality and Safety gives evidence-based medicine a thumbs up

Improving America’s Hospitals: The Joint Commission’s Annual Report on Quality and Safety indicates that evidence-based treatments for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia have resulted in better outcomes for patients. Key findings include:

• Hospitals accredited by The Joint Commission have significantly improved the quality of care provided to heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia patients over a seven-year period.
• Hospitals have steadily improved on individual surgical care performance measures, as well as on additional individual heart attack and pneumonia care measures.
• Hospital performance on two individual measures of quality relating to inpatient care for childhood asthma is excellent after only one year of measurement.
• Improvement is still needed.
• Where a patient receives care makes a difference.