New Hospital Compare Website Offers Hospital Performance Data That Can Save Lives
“This information about hospitals will save lives not only by encouraging consumers to be vigilant, but also because it will motivate hospital boards and executives to engage more extensively in the quality improvement activities of their staff and physicians,” Schulke said.
Site Could Spark Hospital Improvement
The new Hospital Compare website shows that hospitals vary tremendously from one to another in their performance. It also shows that the quality of care varies a great deal within the walls of a single hospital. For example, a hospital may provide excellent care for pneumonia patients, but fall far short of the best care for heart attack patients.
Schulke noted, “When hospitals advertise to consumers, they market the whole institution, but there is nothing about working under the same roof that ensures that physicians and clinical teams will work together effectively. A primary determinant of hospital quality is how well teams of health care professionals communicate and support each other every day in each clinical service. Hospital management can improve quality for their entire institutions by making the variation of quality performance in distinct clinical areas the top agenda item in every board meeting, and by supporting efforts by clinical teams to work together more effectively on the front lines of care.”
The Hospital Compare website results from collaboration between the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicare Services (CMS) and the Hospital Quality Alliance, involving the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and the American Association of Medical Colleges. Hospital data for the site is reported voluntarily to CMS.
A major goal of the site is to allow hospital board members and senior executives to see how their hospitals stack up against other local institutions and national averages. “Hospital Compare will show hospital leaders where they need to improve,” Schulke said. “Hospitals want to do the best for their patients. We hope that publishing this information will motivate them to invest more in working with doctors, pharmacists and nurses to improve the quality of care.”
Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs) Offer Federally-Funded Assistance
The quality measures reported on Hospital Compare currently reflect hospital efforts to deliver effective care for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia. The site is expected to soon add information on hospital performance in other clinical areas where use of best practices has a critical impact on patient safety, such as procedures that can be successfully used to avoid surgical infections.
Under contract to Medicare, QIOs have been working with hospitals around the country in these clinical areas for more than a decade, providing onsite training in the implementation of best practices. In an effort to teach hospital staff how to monitor their own quality, over the past two years QIOs have also been helping hospitals abstract, submit and validate data on these measures.
“As hospitals make a commitment to use performance data to drive quality improvement programs, there is a QIO in every state ready to assist. This is a service paid for by Medicare to improve quality and reduce costly errors that harm the elderly and disabled, and we encourage hospitals to take advantage of it.” Schulke said.
Source: Newswise
Comments
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