All Entries Tagged With: "Hospital rankings"

Is Disney aiming to make your hospital the happiest place on earth?

The Disney Institute, which helps apply universal Disney best practices to other organizations, has announced a professional development program to help hospitals increase their patient satisfaction, called “Building a Culture of Healthcare Excellence.” The program focuses on helping managers create methods to ensure the entire patient experience–not just clinical outcomes–is a positive one.

With HCAHPS scores now publicly posted (and reimbursement tied to doing so), I expect we might see more of these programs in the future. But only the test of time will tell whether consumers actually use Hospital Compare, the public website that offers such data, to lead their decision-making when choosing hospitals. I imagine if they do visit the site, HCAHPS scores might the easier to understand than other publicly posted measures that are focused on clinical outcomes, and as a result, gain more attention.

I should note, however, that the site is certainly easier to navigate and understand than when first launched a few years ago. It’s now easier on the eyes, includes easier navigation, and offers patient help tools like maps to hospitals, an option to make hospitals “favorites,” and short descriptions of measures and what results might indicate.

Also, as mentioned in an earlier post, local news outlets have begun in earnest to inform the public that these data and resources are available to them.

Still, I suppose time will tell how this public reporting affects the way hospitals operate. Have you noticed patient satisfaction become a more highly prioritized goal in your organization? Where is it compared to five years ago? Where do you think it will be in five years from now? Share your thoughts below.

Team-building program decreases surgical deaths

Hospitals are learning about team building programs in the OR from the aviation industry and NASA to avoid surgical deaths.

A new study showed surgical death rates could decrease if operating room staff used team-building exercises similar to the ones used by airlines and NASA, reports Health Day. The Medical Team Training program enlists operating room staff to talk about potential problems before surgery, administer important checklists, and then evaluate the positive and negatives occurrences after surgery.

There were 182,000 patients who underwent surgery in one of the 108 Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals that were researched in the study from 2006 and 2008. Of those hospitals, 74 were executing the Medical Team Training program, according to Health Day.

The study showed that after one year, surgical deaths at hospitals using the program decreased 18%, whereas hospitals that were not using the program decreased 7%.

Surgical errors are caused by lack of effective communication, according to James Bagian, MD, chief patient safety and systems innovation officer for the University of Michigan Health System, in Ann Arbor, MI. Bagian is the senior study author and a former astronaut.

Bagian also noted that the physicians in charge of the operating room tend to think of themselves as good communicators, although the rest of the OR staff doesn’t always agree. The Medical Team Training program allows OR staff to get together before and after the surgery to discuss what went wrong to avoid future errors, Bagian told Health Day.

Data sharing project boosts patient safety and decreases spending

Hospitals throughout Michigan have helped decrease complications from surgery by compiling a data sharing project that helps 16 Michigan hospitals share information on keeping surgical patients safe.

The University of Michigan Health System collected date from more than 35,000 Michigan patients that went through some sort of vascular surgery from 2005-2007, reports iHealthBeat. The complications patients went through were then compared. The study found that since the data sharing project started, complications from surgery dropped from 10.7% to 9.7%.

According to iHealthBeat, the data sharing project helped reduce post-surgery rates of:

• Blood infections;
• Cardiac arrest;
• Prolonged ventilator use; and
• Septic shock.

Other than improving surgical related complications, the study also found a decrease of 1$3 million in spending.

Read the rest of the article on iHealthBeat.

Does your healthcare facility have a similar project that increases patient safety? Let us know in our comment section!

Researchers find CMS’ Hospital Compare website has faults

Recent high-profile hospital horror stories—such as the Rhode Island hospital that left a piece of a drill bit inside a person’s scalp and a Seattle, WA, hospital that administered an ultimately fatal overdose to a toddler—many patients might find relief knowing they can check out a hospital’s safety records before committing to surgery there.

This is supposedly the benefit of CMS’ Hospital Compare website, which allows the public to compare hospital safety records. But a new study shows that the Hospital Compare website isn’t exactly helpful, according to an article in the Los Angeles Times.

Researchers from the University of Michigan and the Michigan Surgical Collaborative for Outcomes Research and Evaluation in Ann Arbor found that people choosing a hospital based on its high rates wouldn’t necessarily mean they were guaranteed high-quality care.

After examining almost 230,000 Medicare patients who went through certain procedures in 2,038 hospitals during 2005 and 2006, the researchers found that patients were as likely to die within 30 days of their surgeries in poorly-rated hospitals as in supposedly safe hospitals.

They also found that patients suffered more complications in the better ranked hospitals than they did in the worse ranked hospitals, reported the article.

What do you think of the Hospital Compare website? How do you decide which hospital to visit yourself? Let us know in our comment section.

Hospital Compare Web site adds new readmission data

Yesterday the Hospital Quality Alliance announced the addition of new data available on the CMS Hospital Compare Web site. The general public, as well as the medical field, can now log on and compare hospital readmission rates for Medicare patients suffering from a heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. The data show readmissions within 30 days of discharge from any facility, even if patients do not return to the hospital from which they originally were cared for.  This data, collected from  Medicare billing records from July 2005 through June 2008, will provide consumers the ability to make a more educated decision about where they want to seek care.

Readmission rates have become a focus of many prominent groups of late. A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine earlier this year revealed that 20% of Medicare patients are readmitted to the hospital within a month of being discharged, and 34% are readmitted within three months (see an earlier blog post on this announcement).  The CMS launched a pilot project earlier this year to reduce readmissions by working with 14 Quality Improvement Organizations (QIO). The IHI has launched an initiative called STAAR, which stands for State Action on Avoidable Rehospitalizations. 

Additionally, the Obama administration is eyeing rehospitalizations as something that could be financially penalized. Rehospitalizations represent a significant amount of money spent (an extra $17.4 billion in 2004) and an example of how the current health system fails at treating patients in all areas of life and paying particular attention to transitions in care.

Those who log on will find that hospitals’ readmission rates for the conditions listed above are rated as “no different than the U.S. national rate,” “better than the U.S. national rate” or “worse than the U.S. national rate”. Users then have the option to view specific percentages in graphs and tables for the hospitals they have selected to compare.

“”America’s hospitals have long been committed to improving patient care and welcome the
opportunity to use all of the information on the Hospital Compare Web site to gain new insights
into how to strengthen quality,” said Rich Umbdenstock, president and CEO of the American Hospital Association. “In particular, the new information on readmission rates gives hospitals a broad look at how their patients receive care both inside a hospital and after they have been discharged. With the new information now in hand, hospitals will seek to understand why patients are readmitted and how some of those readmissions can be prevented through appropriate changes in care delivery.”

Any reaction to this latest release of quality information on the Hospital Compare Web site?

Expert information on HCAHPS and patient satisfaction

I wanted to make special note of a book that has just published. HCAHPS Basics: A Resource Guide for Healthcare Managers really is just that–a great resource for anyone who has a part in their hospital’s HCAHPS scores management. The book contains tips and advice from author Carrie Brady, JD, MA, vice president of quality at Planetree, a network of healthcare providers working to advance patient centered care. I personally worked with Carrie, who spent several years as vice president for the Connecticut Hospital Association, helping to develop two statewide pilot tests of the HCAHPS Survey. She certainly knows her stuff, and will show you the way through everything HCAHPS, including choosing a vendor, choosing a survey mode, reporting results, getting leadership support, and steps to improve patient satisfaction. The book contains case studies, including the Cleveland Clinic, and includes a CD with even more useful tips and tools. Click here for more information on this inexpensive resource.

While on the topic, I also wanted to make special note of an upcoming audio conference, HCAHPS: Improve Your Scores and Increase Patient Satisfaction, on June 24th. Expert speakers Deirdre Mylod, PhD, and Kimberly Sparks from Press Ganey Associates will speak about national trends in HCAHPS, benchmarking, leadership support, and more. I’ve also been personally working with these speakers, and I can tell you it’s going to be a great program. For more information about it, click here.

Ethics and patient safety: Should you tell patients they can get better care elsewhere?

Earlier today I was reading a posting on the topic of ethical responsibilities from one of our sister publications, HealthLeaders Media and was struck by how the topic directly relates to patient safety. The question at hand is If we have the opportunity to tell patients about the possibility of receiving higher quality care at another organization nearby, should we do so? The question puts two competing ideas against each other: the need to care for patients to the best of our ability, even if that means directing them elsewhere, and the need to also keep our own hospital functioning by caring for patients. Of course, this question is inextricably linked to the topic of money and payment which makes it increasingly more difficult to answer.

The HealthLeaders column, written by Jay Moore, brings up that often, the answer is complex simply because there are so many different ways to measure quality care within healthcare. [more]