National Business Group on Health
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Updated 1/8/08

Why Employers Care: View the Video*

Health care quality and patient safety remain at unacceptably low levels. Employers have a large stake in this issue, since it affects the well-being of their workforces, employee productivity and the bottom line.

Preventable adverse events (AE) and injuries related to medical management are costly and often result in extended lengths of stay in the hospital, as well as lost productivity (Leape, 20021). Such events contribute to rising health care costs, leading hospitals, insurers and employers to consider how improving health care quality and safety can be a source of cost savings. There are approximately 40 million discharges from U.S. hospitals every year, at a national cost approaching $900 billion. Even a small percentage of cases involving harm affects very large numbers of patients and incurs enormous costs.
  • Every day, more than 250 Americans die because of preventable medical errors in hospitals (IOM, 2000)
  • Preventable hospital-acquired infections keep patients in the hospital much longer, incurring additional expenses of $38,000 per case on average (Zhan, 20032)
  • Annual U.S. health spending is about $2 trillion per year, but up to 40% of this is wasted on things such as unnecessary tests, administrative red tape and medical mistakes (IOM, 2000)

What Employers Can Do: Join the Employer Trustee Network

Employers as purchasers of care and as business leaders with expertise in quality improvement in their own companies have much to contribute. It's increasingly clear the hospital and health system boards are the most important agents of change — and employers play a critical role in driving this change. Working with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) and other organizations, the Business Group is helping member company executives be more effective in their hospital Board roles. We invite any Business Group member to send us the names of its executives serving on hospital boards — by joining our network these volunteer Board members from your company will have access (at no cost) to information and support to help them more effectively represent the employer perspective and influence the hospital to achieve safer care.

In addition employers should:
  • Communicate to plans and providers the urgent need for a safe, patient-centric care system
  • Insist on transparency to identify highest quality and safest hospitals, then the most efficient
  • Deliver information to employees on highest quality, safest providers and facilities
  • Actively work with executives on hospital boards to promote "Board on board" governance initiative to create a permanent culture of safety within hospitals
  • Use contracting requirements and "preferred" and "Center of Excellence" status to promote patient safety measures and policies
  • Expect hospitals to refrain from billing and hold patients harmless for "never events" and other costs incurred due to medical errors (as CMS has)

For more employee tools please see A Toolkit for Action: Ensuring Patient Safety Across Health Care.

Choosing the right Hospital: A Guide

The National Health System Patient Safety Leadership Award, sponsored by the National Business Group on Health and the VHA Foundation, recognizes U.S. health systems for exemplary patient safety practices and performance. In 2008 the inaugural awards were presented to the Henry Ford Health System in Detroit, MI, and to Memorial Hermann Healthcare System in Houston, TX (click on system names to view short videos). For details on the award criteria please click here. To see the press release click here.

For more information on our work in patient safety, please contact patientsafety@businessgrouphealth.org.


All Business Group Resources/Publications

This link will take you to a chronological list of Business Group resources that are related to this topic. For additional search options please visit Publications. Most resources are available only to members of the National Business Group on Health and are designated with .


Solutions Online

National Business Group on Health's Position Statement on Quality and Safety

Other Resources



*Sorrel King's speech is copyrighted material of the Josie King Foundation and is used with permission. Please email dvd@josieking.org with questions about using "The Josie King Story" outside of this format. The Donald Berwick interview is the property of CBS News and is licensed from BBC Motion Gallery.

1 Leape L, Reporting of adverse events, NEJM. 14 November 2002; 347(20): 1633-1638. Institute of Medicine, To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System, National Academy Press, 2000.

2 Zhan C and Miller MR, Excess length of stay, charges and mortality attributable to medical injuries during hospitalization, JAMA (2003) Oct 8:290(14):1868-74

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