Medicare to Publish Hospital Heart Care Benchmark
According to USA Today CMS is about to publish a comparison of heart attack and heart failure death rate on its Hospital Compare website. Right now the site gives access to data about various clinical practices known to improve outcomes such as the percentage of heart attack patients given aspirin at arrival. Last month nearly 4,000 facilities were told how their 30-day death rates for 2003 fared against national averages of 17.8 percent for heart attacks and 11.6 percent for heart failure. Next June data collected from July 1, 2005 to June 30, 2006 will make it on the site. The effort falls short of full transparency as the exact death rates won’t be disclosed (whether it would be useful to do so is disputable) but readers will know whether any given hospital is below, at, or above the average.
Gary Noskin of Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago was quoted as saying: “It clearly needs to be done, but I’m not sure 30-day mortality is the right measure. A patient could have a heart attack (and be treated successfully) and get hit by a bus after he leaves the hospital.” Medicare says its methodology focuses on patterns of care, not individual cases.
See also: New York State Published Loads of Hospital Data.
January 10, 2007 Related topics: Quality, Safety, Errors