Fact Checker : Obama’s claim the Affordable Care Act was a ‘major reason’ in preventing 50,000 patient deaths (VIDEO)...

By Glenn Kessler April 1

The Affordable Care Act is “a major reason why we’ve seen 50,000 fewer preventable patient deaths in hospitals.”

– President Obama, remarks on the fifth anniversary of the Affordable Care Act, March 25, 2015

This number jumped out at us during the president’s recent speech hailing his health-care law. Could 50,000 people have not died in hospitals because of the Affordable Care Act?That seemed rather extraordinary, even given the size of the United States. We’ve spent time digging around on this issue, and here are the results of our inquiry. It turns out that preventing hospital-related deaths is one of the least controversial aspects of the much-attacked law. 

The Facts

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The 50,000 number is derived from a study, released on Dec. 2, 2014, by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an arm of the Department of Health and Human Services.

The study looked at the impact of the Partnership for Patients, a $460 million program funded by the health law that ties together 3,800 hospitals in 27 “health engagement” networks, with the goal of reducing 10 categories of “patient harms,” such as adverse drug events, pressure ulcers and catheter-associated urinary tract infections. The networks collaborate to identify possible solutions to common problems and then circulate those ideas among the various hospitals, with the goal of reducing preventable hospital-acquired conditions (HACs) by 40 percent and 30-day hospital readmissions by 20 percent. more