Is performance or reputation more important?
Does reputation equate to performance?
Are the data being measured of real patient care value?
A new report released by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Hospitals (JCAH) suggests that on a variety of fronts hospitals are doing a better job of patient care. They looked specifically at five areas of care: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgical, children’s asthma. The report shows that in terms of several quality measures, such as administering antibiotics in a timely manner to surgical or ICU patient, giving aspirin to heart attack patients on admission to the ER and the like, overall hospitals have improved in last couple of years.
The new report identifies 405 hospitals out of over 3,000 (14%) accredited by the JCAH. Those selected had to achieve a compliance score of at least 95% in one or more of the five key areas monitored during this review. Some hospitals achieved these scores in only one category, others in two, three or more. The complete list has been published.
Of note is the finding that none of the 17 medical centers listed by U.S. News & World Report on its “Best Hospitals Honor Roll” this year are on the Joint Commission’s list of 405 hospitals that received at least a 95% composite score for compliance with treatment standards. About one-third of a hospital’s score in the U.S. News methodology is also based on its reputation as gauged by a survey of physicians.
The findings bring into question how deserving these institutions are of their reputations. Still other measures of quality are out there including Medicare’s Hospital Compare site which lists among other things, mortality and morbidity rates for hospitals based on Medicare data.
It should also be noted that many hospitals that did not make this list still scored very highly and only missed the list by a few percentage points. In fact it could well be that the difference in some cases was not performance at all, but simply lack of detailed documentation, which is really all JCAH and Medicare can go by in their respective data compilations.
The entire “science” of medical comparative outcomes is still really in it’s infancy, with many confounding factors needing to be considered and analyzed to achieve a true picture of outcomes and valid comparisons between facilities and treatments. Still, it is clear that with increasing data collection, better analytical evaluation can be undertaken and a more informed patient and provider population will result.
Report Finds Improved Performance by Hospitals – http://is.gd/STHqr4
2010 Top Performers on Key Quality Measures – http://is.gd/YK09jV
Hospital Compare – http://is.gd/QfMaQ9