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When you or a member of your family is faced with an illness that requires hospitalization, choosing the right hospital
can seem overwhelming. How do you know which hospital will meet your needs? Several organizations collect information
on hospital quality efforts to help patients make informed decisions about where to receive care.
MVP has an Internet comparison tool, called the Hospital Quality Reports, which pulls much of this information
together in one easy-to-use tool. This tool allows a side-by-side comparison of hospitals in a geographic area
for a specific condition based on several quality measures such as procedural volume, mortality (death rate),
complications and length of stay. You can choose the procedure or diagnosis of interest, how far you are willing
to travel from a specific town or zip code and see a list of hospitals with how they rank in these measures.
Information available through this tool includes:
Leapfrog Group Measures – This group, comprised of
employers and other organizations, encourages hospitals to report their progress
toward adopting four practices that have been identified nationally as critical to improve the quality of hospital care and reduce
medical errors. These steps include establishing a computerized system for entering medication orders, hiring physician-specialists
trained in intensive care to oversee intensive care units and reporting data on experience noting the number of specific procedures
performed. The fourth step is a set of 27 safe practices endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF).
State-Reported Measures – Hospitals in 21 states (including MVP’s service area: NY, VT, and NH) are mandated to report the following
data annually by procedure and diagnosis: number of patients treated, percent of patients who died in the hospital (mortality), the
average number of days in the hospital (length of stay) and complications (measured by an index that includes several quality indictors).
Relative Cost – In 2006 MVP added information on relative costs to the tool for the 29 high-volume hospitals MVP has worked closely
with over the past few years. Relative costs are displayed in 1 – 5 dollar signs ($-$$$$$) and represent the amount a hospital may
be paid by the health plan in relation to other hospitals in same state. These payments do not include physician fees or any outpatient services.
U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) Measures – CMS encourages hospitals to report on 20 quality measures that have
been linked to positive outcomes for the following conditions: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention.
Click here to take a look at this tool. Your feedback is
important to us – please complete a survey regarding this tool available through a link at the bottom of the page
MVP also encourages hospitals to adopt automated processes for sending Emergency Room reports and
discharge summaries to Primary Care Physicians (PCPs) to notify your doctor that you were in the hospital.
MVP reviews the PCP medical records of hospitalized members for these reports to ensure communication between
the hospital and the member’s PCP. MVP has developed reports showing some of our participating hospitals’
performance. Please click here to review these reports.
MVP also encourages you to check out the following web sites which provide additional information about patient safety:
- The Leapfrog Group promotes improvement in hospital safety and an informed health care consumer.
- For more information about the IHI 100k Lives Campaign go to the IHI website.
- The Hospital Compare tool allows an individual to compare the quality of care provided
by hospitals for a chosen condition.
- Similar data is available by using the Quality CheckTM tool on the Joint Commission’s web site.
- Additional information is available to help you learn how you can prevent medical errors while in the hospital.
A brochure, Speak Up, can be obtained by visiting the JCAHO website.
- The Act 53 Hospital Report Cards
are available to compare hospitals in Vermont in various categories that include quality, patient satisfaction and finances
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