Medicare posts hospitals' 'clean and dirty laundry' on Hospital Compare website

Post and Courier ^ | 1-20-14 | Lauren Sausser

[afraidfortherepublic]

Patients can make choices about which hospital they use based on many factors, including advertisements on billboards and signs on the back of city buses.

While annual hospital rankings published in magazines like U.S. News & World Report and Consumer Reports offer conflicting advice on the best places to seek treatment, plain-and-simple geography can also matter. So do health insurance networks and recommendations from friends or physicians.

“How does the consumer know which to believe?” said Dr. Todd Shuman, vice president and chief quality officer for Roper St. Francis Healthcare. “Should they believe this, or should they believe this? Or should they believe our billboard, which shows something about somebody rating us? Who knows, right?”

Maybe it's just that your family has always gone to Roper Hospital or Trident Medical Center or the Medical University, so that's where you go too.

The federal government thinks we can do better than that.

While Medicare's Hospital Compare website isn't new, the database is routinely updated with fresh information, designed to help patients make more informed decisions about where they should do business.

Health care, after all, is big business.

“If you go to Hospital Compare, you can do a side-by-side look at how all the hospitals in this area are doing,” said Todd Gallati, CEO of Trident Health. “Having our test score posted in the front of the room makes us better.”

[Paine in the Neck]

How long before gov’t ratings of hospitals are as trustworthy as its unemployment or inflation numbers?

[upchuck]

Link to the web site:
http://www.medicare.gov/hospitalcompare/search.html

[KoRn]

At our local hospital where I work, they do good at some things, but overall, I wouldn’t go there for anything more serious than a sprained ankle if I have a choice. What’s bad is that’s the only option for a hospital in the area, unless you can travel a little over an hour away.

[afraidfortherepublic]

LOLOLOL! Yes, I would still rely on my friends’ experiences before the government.

[A_Tradition_Continues]

Since all hospitals are not included in all “networks” it will be interesting when folks are delegated to the poorest rated “in-network” facility.

[Wordkraft]

It won’t be long before the ratings are based on how much money is “donated” back to Zero and his henchmen.

[Gay State Conservative]

As one who worked for 20 years at one of the world's finest,and most famous,hospitals I can guarantee that the single best measure of a hospital's overall competence/quality is its affiliation with a medical school.

That is,a major teaching hospital of Harvard,Yale,Columbia,Johns Hopkins or UCLA Medical School will be noticeably better.... no,dramatically better...than a small hospital in Snowshoe,Montana.That's not to say that one won't necessarily get good care (for less serious conditions) in Snowshoe,but it won't come close to comparing to the care you'll get at Hopkins or UCLA.

[Sooth2222]

Patients can make choices about which hospital they use based on many factors, including advertisements on billboards and signs on the back of city buses.

Not to mention which hospitals their Obamacare insurance policies will cover. (And dollars-to-donuts says the Obamacare hospitals may be the least expensive, but they aren't the best.)

[Bigg Red]

Excellent observation.

[pieceofthepuzzle]

I've worked the majority of my professional life at these hospitals, but have also covered ‘outside’, not-university hospitals, and I have to say the the times have changed - and this generalization is not definitively true anymore.

First of all, multiple generations of physicians have been trained by the universities you speak of, and have often stayed in the area at local hospitals. Thus, those local hospitals are staffed by people with the same training as the university hospitals.

Second, a significant number of physicians at many universities don't do more than a few months of medical service during the year, and maybe a few days a month at clinic. They spend the majority of their time in research-related activities. If you're a really good clinician, you can do this and still be outstanding, but this is unfortunately not always the case. So, as a patient, it can be hit or miss at University medical centers, depending who happens to be on service at the time.

I've seen easily as many mistakes made at ‘famous’ hospitals as I've seen at well-run ‘community’ hospitals, including mistakes that wound up contributing to the patients death. What I will agree with is that university hospitals have multiple layers of people looking at patients - (nurses, medical students, residents, sometimes fellows, the attending of record, consultants, etc.), and this helps to identify mistakes.

My general thoughts about this is that in medicine dogma is the enemy of truth and the enemy of the best care.

[DoughtyOne]

Close hospitals! That’s what this is about.

Eliminate access to health care, and the cost the government has to pay is reduced.

Close 50% of the hospitals, and the cost of health care will go down by at least 20%.

There you have it.