“Hospitals periodically develop an allergy to public reporting of the quality of their care and, their leaders being as human as the rest of us, who can blame them? Most people would run from that kind of scrutiny.

The thing is, though, it works.

Hospital care has continued to improve in Western New York and around the state, according to the latest report from the Niagara Health Quality Coalition. Other factors may be influencing the hospitals’ improving quality of care, but without doubt, a prominent one is that the data is reported to the public. That’s a powerful incentive to perform.”

“If a hospital is among the best at caring for very sick adults, does that mean it’s a good place for seriously ill kids, too? Not necessarily. Treatments for children and adults with the same disease aren’t always the same, and tubes, needles, and dosages can’t simply be scaled down. The Best Children\’s Hospitals Rankings showcase medical centers that every day deal with kids who have cancer, cystic fibrosis, defective hearts, and countless other life-threatening or rare conditions beyond the capabilities of most hospitals, even those with sizable pediatric departments. The rankings show the 30 top children’s centers in 10 specialties.”

“A Wyoming business group pushing for more transparency in health care has asked 27 of the state’s hospitals to participate in a national performance survey.

The Leapfrog survey will help employers and patients make better decisions about health care, said Anne Ladd, chief executive of the Wyoming Business Coalition on Health.

The survey measures how hospitals perform according to various quality and safety measures.”

“Fears that hospitals would try to boost their published quality ratings by turning away sicker patients have not been borne out, at least in one large state, researchers said.

Following the introduction of mandatory reporting of coronary bypass surgery outcomes in California, no significant change occurred in patient case mix or prevalence of risk factors.

We found no evidence of decreased access to coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) for high-risk patients in California during the period of public reporting of isolated CABG outcomes,” the researchers wrote.”

The Atlas Web site incorporates 25 million data points about national, regional and local health care markets, as well as individual hospitals and their affiliated physicians, which rwjf.org will use to create interactive maps and features. it will include:

• Easy access to the Atlas’ extensive database, allowing users to create custom maps, trend reports, charts and tables that can be downloaded and used in reports and presentations.
• Search functionality to conduct comparative analysis of profiles of hospitals, primary care service areas, hospital service areas, hospital referral areas and states.
• A “key issues” section to highlight research themes such as Medicare spending, supply-sensitive care, preference-sensitive care, the physician workforce, end-of-life care, racial disparities, accountable care organizations and more.

It also features case studies on how Atlas data has been used by other researchers and groups, and the ability to browse through 14 years of archived media coverage.

Visit the new Web site, www.dartmouthatlas.org.

A study appearing in the April 20 Annals of Internal Medicine says the standings of top hospitals in U.S.News & World Report reflect more “subjective reputations” over more objective measures of quality. So what should we think?

“I found that if you look at the top-ranked 50 hospitals, about 75% of the ranking comes from its reputation and not from objective quality of care. And if you look at the top five hospitals in each specialty, nearly 100% of its ranking comes from its reputation and not from objective quality of care,” researcher Ashwini Sehgal says.

“The study done for Hearst by Niagara Health Quality Coalition of New York used a program developed by the federal government to analyze 2007 hospital billing data. The program is designed to determine the relative safety records of each hospital based on the outcomes of certain treatments. The data is collected by the state Department of Health on all patients in all hospitals.”

“Thomson Reuters’ The 100 Top Hospitals program recognizes 100 healthcare organizations from across the country that achieve the highest national scores based on nine separate measures of hospital performance—operational, clinical and financial—that affect patients as well as the quality of care in the community. The results of the annual studies are released exclusively to Modern Healthcare.”

“Working with its member hospitals and health systems across the state, the Illinois Hospital Association (IHA) today launched a new web site aimed at helping Illinoisans become better informed consumers of health care. The site, Illinois Hospitals Caring for You (www.illinoishospitals.org), provides current data on the services provided at nearly 200 Illinois hospitals and how they measure up in quality and safety of care, as well as other useful information.”

“The Iowa Hospital Association is objecting to the idea of having a state agency collect and publish information about the quality of services performed by hospitals and other health-care providers.

Consumer advocates have pushed for mandatory disclosure of health-care quality data, including infection rates at hospitals. They say such publication, already provided in some other states, would add pressure for improvements in patient safety and quality of care.

Association Vice President Greg Boattenhamer said a better alternative is to continue allowing providers to voluntarily collect and disseminate data through the Iowa Healthcare Collaborative, an agency co-founded by the hospital association and the Iowa Medical Society.”