Comparing Hospitals

HHS expands website of hospital comparisons.
Florida's Palm Beach Post (7/8, Singer) reports "health consumers can find out significantly more about the quality of care at their hospitals after the US Department of Heath and Human Services updated its www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov website with searchable data on outpatient surgical infections, heart attack treatment success and more." Data released Wednesday "appeared to bolster that argument, at least for heart attack patients," which showed "a drop in the national 30-day mortality rate for heart attacks of 0.4 percent to 16.2 percent for the three fiscal years of 2006-09." Also, the new healthcare law will "likely" give the comparison data "even greater weight" because some of the information may be used to calculate hospitals' reimbursements after 2013.
The Hill 's (7/8, Pecquet) "Healthwatch" blog reports "the online tool that lets users analyze and compare data on patient care from more than 4,700 hospitals across the country." HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said that "thanks to this new update this year, for the first time, Medicare patients can see how efficiently facilities use certain types of imaging equipment and keep them safe from exposure to potentially harmful radiation that may not be necessary."
Modern Healthcare (7/8) notes that new additions to the website "include four measures related to use – or overuse – of medical imaging; two measures related to antibiotic administration in outpatient surgery patients; and four measures related to outpatient care during possible heart attacks."
Comparison data show variations across hospitals, regions. Virginia's Richmond Times-Dispatch (7/8, Smith) reports Hospital Compare, available since 2003, "traditionally" has focused on "inpatient care," and the hospitals get a chance to see the data before they are posted. According to Dr. Barry Straube, CMS' chief medical officer, the data show "hospitals with higher heart-attack and heart-failure death rates are concentrated in the South."
The Boston Globe (7/8, Kowalczyk) reports "Massachusetts hospitals as a whole outperform hospitals across the country on the quality of outpatient care, including providing fast treatment to emergency room patients with chest pain and protecting surgery patients from infections."
The Hartford Courant (7/8, Becker) reports that "on average, Connecticut hospitals performed better than the national average in nearly all measures," including "the number of minutes before outpatients with chest pain get an electrocardiogram." Straube also said the "goal here is not to label hospitals as good or bad, but it's to provide insight to the hospitals as well as the general public on what they are achieving in the care that they render through Medicare and other programs."
The San Antonio Express-News (7/8, Finley) reports that while San Antonio, TX, "hospitals as a group did fairly well, most had at least one area of concern." On the issue of how many patients got a second mammogram or ultrasound within 45 days of a screening mammogram, the government said "the best hospitals" tend to have a rate between 8 percent and 14 percent, "indicating enough – but not too much – follow-up."