In Connecticut, a 2010 analysis of three months of cases found that hospitals reported about half — 23 out of 48 — of the central-line infections that made patients sick. Reviewers took a second look in 2012 and found improved reporting — about a quarter of the cases were unreported, according to the state public health department.

New York state officials have a rigorous data-checking system that they described in a report on 2015 infection rates. In 2014, they targeted hospitals that were reporting low rates of infections and urged self-audits that found underreporting rates of nearly 11 percent.


Not all states double-check the data, though, which Pronovost said underscores the problem with data tracking the quality of health care. He said that common oversight standards, like the accounting standards that apply to publicly traded corporations, would make sense in health care, given that patients make life-or-death decisions based on quality ratings assigned to hospitals.

“You’d think, given the stakes, you’d have more confidence that the data is reliable,” he said.

KHN’s coverage related to aging & improving care of older adults is supported by The John A. Hartford Foundation.

Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit health newsroom whose stories appear in news outlets nationwide, is an editorially independent part of the Kaiser Family Foundation.

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