Hospital financials
Hospitals are required by law to collect hospital-specific financial, utilization, staffing and services data. Except for federal hospitals, all hospitals are required to complete a Hospital Annual Report (HAR) and submit copies of their audited financial statements and Medicare cost report to the Minnesota Department of Health. A database of key hospital indicators is maintained for comparative reporting. There are more than 500 data elements in the database.
Adverse Health Events reporting
Hospitals are required to report any of 29 types of adverse health events defined by the National Quality Forum. Initiated by the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Department of Health and created through state legislation, our system is the first in the nation to champion this important improvement in how we track and report the most serious medical errors. Since the law’s inception, many other states have followed Minnesota’s lead by adopting some form of adverse health-event reporting. The learnings from these reports result in continuous safety improvement at every hospital.
In addition, hospitals are submitting data on infections and strokes, working with the state to improve health care quality while striving to create a uniform approach to quality measurement in Minnesota.
Who collects all of this data?
Under an agreement with the Minnesota Department of Health, MHA serves as the voluntary, nonprofit reporting organization for the collection of hospital-specific comparative data. See Health Care Cost Information System Reports.
Adverse health event data is collected through the MHA Patient Safety Registry. Through the Registry, hospitals can learn from the reporting of events and their root causes.
What data is available publicly?
With the exception of administrative cost data, all hospital-specific comparative data information is public. For more information about hospital-specific comparative data, complete our contact form.
Hospital-Specific Reporting Measures
Under state law, hospitals must publicly report hospital-specific performance on acute myocardial infarction, heart failure and pneumonia as well as hospital-acquired infections as published by the National Quality Forum. These hospital-specific performance measures can be found on the following websites:
- The Hospital Compare website has information about the quality of care at over 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals across the country. You can use Hospital Compare to find hospitals and compare the quality of their care. This website provides hospital-specific performance on the measures of care for acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, pneumonia and hospital-acquired infections as published by the National Quality Forum/National Healthcare Surveillance System (NHSN).
- The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) website contains surveillance reports that include summaries of healthcare-associated infections and associated statewide benchmarks.
Adverse Health Event Reporting
Minnesota hospitals are committed to doing all they can to prevent avoidable mistakes and improve patient care. Minnesota hospitals have championed an important improvement in how we track and report the most serious medical errors. Initiated by the Minnesota Hospital Association and the Minnesota Department of Health and created through state legislation in 2003, our system is the first in the nation to be built on the National Quality Forum’s list of reportable adverse events (see below), including retained objects after surgery, serious medication errors, pressure ulcers and more.
Through hospital participation in the MHA Patient Safety Registry, hospitals report safety event and medical error information in order to share existing safeguards, identify common safety issues and facilitate new collaborative solutions among hospitals. Minnesota’s approach goes beyond reporting; hospitals gain access to valuable information including benchmark reports and key learnings and action steps from peer hospitals.
The Minnesota Department of Health produces an annual report of adverse events in Minnesota hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and regional treatment centers.
Guidance for Adverse Health Care Event Reporting
The MHA Patient Safety Registry Advisory Council works with the Department of Health to address questions about definitions related to the adverse health event reporting law. View the recommendations and guidance for AHE reporting on MHA’s quality and patient safety webpage. The purpose of these recommendations is to create more accurate and consistent reporting across organizations.
- Recommendations and guidance for implementing the serious reportable AHE Event Billing Policy
- A Consensus Statement of the Harvard Hospitals, “When Things Go Wrong – Responding to Adverse Events,” Burlington, Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors, 2006.
- RCA2 Improving Root Cause Analyses and Actions to Prevent Harm
These events have been adopted from the National Quality Forum’s list of serious reportable events. Download a printable fact sheet from the Minnesota Department of Health with language directly from Minnesota statute 144.7065.
Surgical Events
- Surgery or other invasive procedure performed on a wrong body part.
- Surgery or other invasive procedure performed on the wrong patient.
- The wrong surgical or other invasive procedure performed on a patient.
- Retention of a foreign object in a patient after surgery or other invasive procedure.
- Death during or immediately after surgery of a normal, healthy patient.
Product or Device Events
- Patient death or serious injury associated with the use of contaminated drugs, devices, or biologics provided by the facility.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with the use or function of a device in patient care in which the device used or functions other than as intended.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with intravascular air embolism that occurs while being cared for in a facility.
Patient Protection Events
- A patient who does not have decision-making capacity discharged to the wrong person.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with patient disappearance.
- Patient suicide, attempted suicide or self harm resulting in serious injury or death while being cared for in a facility.
Care Management Events
- Patient death or serious injury associated with a medication error, including, but not limited to, errors involving the wrong drug, the wrong dose, the wrong patient, the wrong time, the wrong rate, the wrong preparation, or the wrong route of administration
- Patient death or serious injury associated with unsafe administration of blood or blood products.
- Maternal death or serious injury associated with labor or delivery in a low-risk pregnancy while being cared for in a facility.
- Death or serious injury of a neonate associated with labor or delivery in a low-risk pregnancy.
- Stage 3, 4 or unstageable pressure ulcers acquired after admission to a facility.
- Artificial insemination with the wrong donor egg or sperm.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with a fall while being care for in a facility.
- The irretrievable loss of an irreplaceable biological specimen.
- Patient death or serious injury resulting from the failure to follow up or communicate laboratory, pathology or radiology test results.
Environmental Events
- Patient death or serious injury associated with an electric shock while being cared for in a facility
- Any incident in which a line designated for oxygen or other gas to be delivered to a patient contains the wrong gas or is contaminated by toxic substances.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with a burn incurred from any source while being cared for in a facility.
- Patient death or serious injury associated with the use or lack of restraints or bedrails while being cared for in a facility.
Potential Criminal Events
- Any instance of care ordered by or provided by someone impersonating a physician, nurse, pharmacist, or other licensed health care provider.
- Abduction of a patient of any age.
- Sexual assault on a patient within or on the grounds of a facility.
- Death or significant injury of a patient or staff member resulting from a physical assault that occurs within or on the grounds of a facility.
Radiologic Events
29. Death or serious injury of a patient associated with the introduction of a metallic object into the MRI area.