Adverse patient safety events in the U.S. and western Europe will drive an estimated healthcare cost burden of $383.7 billion by 2022, Frost & Sullivan finds.
Here are four things to know.
1. The analysis, Patient Safety in Healthcare, Forecast to 2022, assesses the 30 most pressing adverse events affecting patients, caregivers and healthcare organizations worldwide. These adverse episodes are estimated to lead to 91.8 million patient admissions across the U.S. and western Europe, resulting in approximately 1.95 million deaths.
2. The study identifies healthcare-associated infections, sepsis, medication safety, pressure ulcers, diagnostic errors, antibiotic resistance, unnecessary emergency department admissions and hand hygiene non-compliance as adverse events.
3. Trends driving patient safety market growth include:
- A shift to value-based, quality-driven reimbursement models
- Advancements in medical, surgical and patient care technologies
- Integration between medtech and digital health technologies such as data analytics, remote monitoring and surveillance
- Data interoperability and enhanced use of predictive analytics for outcomes improvement
- Emerging use of technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence and wearables to limit patient safety violations
"Up to 17 percent of all hospitalizations are affected by one or more adverse events and around 15 percent of hospital expenditure is attributable to addressing them. The fact that 30 to 70 percent of these are potentially avoidable makes it imperative to prevent them from happening," said Anuj Agarwal, Transformational Healthcare Senior Research Analyst at Frost & Sullivan. "To reap growth opportunities, care providers and market participants should target their patient safety value proposition toward low-penetration areas with significant disruptive potential like antibiotic resistance, cybersecurity, avoidable ED admissions, pressure ulcers and sepsis."
4. In the next four years, Frost & Sullivan predicts:
- Patient safety transitioning from an ancillary to a core value proposition
- High adoption of patient and asset tracking and identification technologies;
- Increased consolidation large medtech companies to provide targeted solutions for key unmet need areas
- Significant use of remote healthcare technologies such as Internet of Medical Things along with increasing healthcare data exchange, leading to increase in cybersecurity risks such as protected heath information compromise and medical device/implants data breach
- Collaboration to develop guidance documents and draft policies for risk mitigation best practices
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