Originally published July 30 2005
Studies find that performance reports push hospitals to improve
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A national initiative for hospitals to improve their care is putting hospitals on the right track.
A national initiative that requires hospitals to report on the quality of their care is a powerful motivator for the institutions to improve their performance.
Yet many hospitals in the United Sates fall short of meeting even basic standards in treating heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia.
Those are the findings of twin studies, appearing today in the New England Journal of Medicine, that are the first to look closely at the growing movement in health care to get hospitals to routinely report on their performance and make the information public.
He is head of research for the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, or JCAHO ("jay- co"), which is the main hospital-accrediting organization in the country.
But under pressure from consumers, employers and insurers, hospitals have come to realize that they need to operate more transparently.
As a result, several initiatives have been launched in recent years to collect hospital performance data on a national scale and make it widely available to the public through the Internet.
For some measures, such as giving heart attack patients aspirin when they arrive at the hospital, the scores were 95 percent or higher -- "nearing optimal performance," the authors said.
A companion study by Harvard researchers looked at many of the same measures for treatment of heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia at 3,558 hospitals, using data collected by the Hospital Quality Alliance.
The alliance is a coalition of health care agencies and groups led by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which oversees the federal health care programs for seniors and low-income people.
"Where you live -- and the hospital you go to -- has a profound impact on whether you will receive these lifesaving therapies or not," said Jha.
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