Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Article from local newspaper; see bottom of article to get information on your own local hospital!
Austin area hospitals rated on heart, pneumonia care
Ratings aimed at giving more information to consumers, raising quality of patient care
By Mary Ann Roser
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Austin area hospitals made grades ranging from fair to good for heart attack and heart failure care but generally received poorer marks for pneumonia care under new performance measures now publicly available.
The hospitals voluntarily reported data to the federal government, which posted the results for the first time earlier this month on its Medicare Web site at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hospital. The program judges hospitals on how often they followed the best practices for treating three serious conditions: heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.
The statistics, from the first three months of 2004, are designed to inform consumers and improve the quality of care.
Seton Medical Center earned the highest scores locally for heart care, doing as well as or better than half of the more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals taking part in the Hospital Quality Initiative. South Austin Hospital, which is part of the St. David's system, scored lower than six other Central Texas hospitals in treating certain aspects of heart attack and heart failure.
Meanwhile, the Georgetown Healthcare System did the best job among nine Central Texas hospitals in pneumonia care and scored in the top half of U.S. hospitals, although not in the top 10 percent.
Austin area hospitals that scored in the bottom half of those surveyed generally attributed their scores to weak documentation -- except in pneumonia care. All agreed they could do better, especially in giving a pneumonia shot to patients.
"What we found out at St. David's is a number of physicians were not documenting what they were doing" for heart patients, such as writing down that an aspirin was given to someone having a heart attack, said Dr. Steve Berkowitz, chief medical officer of the St. David's HealthCare Partnership. "These are process steps. When we look at outcomes, we know we do very well."
South Austin Hospital was listed this year as one of the top 100 hospitals in the United States for cardiovascular care, based on survival rates by Solucient, a health information company.
Seton also made Solucient's top 100 list for cardiovascular care, as did Scott & White in Temple and the Heart Hospital of Austin.
In the new report, based on seven measures for treating heart attack and heart failure, Seton performed better than 90 percent of the nation's hospitals on one measure and in the top half of the hospitals in the country on four other measures. It was just one percentage point below the top 50 percent on two other measures: giving beta blockers to heart attack patients when they come to the hospital and when they leave.
Scott & White scored in the top 50 percent of hospitals on five measures for cardiac care and in the lower half on two others for heart attack treatment: giving aspirin on arrival and departure.
The Heart Hospital scored better than half of U.S. hospitals on three heart attack measures and slightly worse on two. It also scored in the bottom half on the two measures used to gauge care of heart failure patients: assessing the function of the left ventricle and giving a blood-pressure drug for it.
"There should be noticeable improvements between the second and third quarters" of 2004 based on better documentation, said Torje Scott of Heart Hospital.
She said that the Texas Business Group on Health, which also lists hospital performance on its Web site, www.tbgh.org, shows that the Heart Hospital has lower death rates for heart attack and balloon angioplasty than other Austin area hospitals.
Brackenridge Hospital treated fewer heart attack patients but handled heart failure well, scoring in the top 10 percent in one category and close to it in a second.
Scores for St. David's Medical Center and North Austin Medical Center were mixed.
All of the hospitals, except Georgetown, scored in the bottom half of U.S. hospitals in vaccinating pneumonia patients. (Hospitals that treated fewer than 25 patients were not considered; the study said that was too few to be statistically reliable.)
Hospital officials said they had seen that as the responsibility of primary care doctors. Seton hospitals now have stickers to remind doctors and nurses to screen patients for pneumonia vaccination, said Michele Gonzalez, director of media and communications.
Hospitals should look on the measures as an opportunity to improve, and consumers should see them as a "starting point" to compare hospitals and ask questions, said Kevin Warren, director of quality improvement with the Texas Medical Foundation, which contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to promote the information to consumers.
"It's an opportunity for hospitals to benchmark themselves against each other," Warren added. "How do they stack up to the top 10 percent of the hospitals in the country?"
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
Get a hospital score
Go to www.cms.hhs.gov/ quality/hospital. To get individual hospital reports, go to the highlights box and click on "data available." On the next page, go to the bottom and "select a state."
Go to city search, choose the city you want and hit "search by city."
Then, select the quality measures you want on the left (all can be selected) and choose a hospital.
The first column shows the results for the top 10 percent of U.S. hospitals surveyed, the second column represents the top half of U.S. hospitals, and the third shows the hospital you chose.
Austin area hospitals rated on heart, pneumonia care
Ratings aimed at giving more information to consumers, raising quality of patient care
By Mary Ann Roser
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
Austin area hospitals made grades ranging from fair to good for heart attack and heart failure care but generally received poorer marks for pneumonia care under new performance measures now publicly available.
The hospitals voluntarily reported data to the federal government, which posted the results for the first time earlier this month on its Medicare Web site at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hospital. The program judges hospitals on how often they followed the best practices for treating three serious conditions: heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.
The statistics, from the first three months of 2004, are designed to inform consumers and improve the quality of care.
Seton Medical Center earned the highest scores locally for heart care, doing as well as or better than half of the more than 4,000 U.S. hospitals taking part in the Hospital Quality Initiative. South Austin Hospital, which is part of the St. David's system, scored lower than six other Central Texas hospitals in treating certain aspects of heart attack and heart failure.
Meanwhile, the Georgetown Healthcare System did the best job among nine Central Texas hospitals in pneumonia care and scored in the top half of U.S. hospitals, although not in the top 10 percent.
Austin area hospitals that scored in the bottom half of those surveyed generally attributed their scores to weak documentation -- except in pneumonia care. All agreed they could do better, especially in giving a pneumonia shot to patients.
"What we found out at St. David's is a number of physicians were not documenting what they were doing" for heart patients, such as writing down that an aspirin was given to someone having a heart attack, said Dr. Steve Berkowitz, chief medical officer of the St. David's HealthCare Partnership. "These are process steps. When we look at outcomes, we know we do very well."
South Austin Hospital was listed this year as one of the top 100 hospitals in the United States for cardiovascular care, based on survival rates by Solucient, a health information company.
Seton also made Solucient's top 100 list for cardiovascular care, as did Scott & White in Temple and the Heart Hospital of Austin.
In the new report, based on seven measures for treating heart attack and heart failure, Seton performed better than 90 percent of the nation's hospitals on one measure and in the top half of the hospitals in the country on four other measures. It was just one percentage point below the top 50 percent on two other measures: giving beta blockers to heart attack patients when they come to the hospital and when they leave.
Scott & White scored in the top 50 percent of hospitals on five measures for cardiac care and in the lower half on two others for heart attack treatment: giving aspirin on arrival and departure.
The Heart Hospital scored better than half of U.S. hospitals on three heart attack measures and slightly worse on two. It also scored in the bottom half on the two measures used to gauge care of heart failure patients: assessing the function of the left ventricle and giving a blood-pressure drug for it.
"There should be noticeable improvements between the second and third quarters" of 2004 based on better documentation, said Torje Scott of Heart Hospital.
She said that the Texas Business Group on Health, which also lists hospital performance on its Web site, www.tbgh.org, shows that the Heart Hospital has lower death rates for heart attack and balloon angioplasty than other Austin area hospitals.
Brackenridge Hospital treated fewer heart attack patients but handled heart failure well, scoring in the top 10 percent in one category and close to it in a second.
Scores for St. David's Medical Center and North Austin Medical Center were mixed.
All of the hospitals, except Georgetown, scored in the bottom half of U.S. hospitals in vaccinating pneumonia patients. (Hospitals that treated fewer than 25 patients were not considered; the study said that was too few to be statistically reliable.)
Hospital officials said they had seen that as the responsibility of primary care doctors. Seton hospitals now have stickers to remind doctors and nurses to screen patients for pneumonia vaccination, said Michele Gonzalez, director of media and communications.
Hospitals should look on the measures as an opportunity to improve, and consumers should see them as a "starting point" to compare hospitals and ask questions, said Kevin Warren, director of quality improvement with the Texas Medical Foundation, which contracts with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to promote the information to consumers.
"It's an opportunity for hospitals to benchmark themselves against each other," Warren added. "How do they stack up to the top 10 percent of the hospitals in the country?"
maroser@statesman.com; 445-3619
Get a hospital score
Go to www.cms.hhs.gov/ quality/hospital. To get individual hospital reports, go to the highlights box and click on "data available." On the next page, go to the bottom and "select a state."
Go to city search, choose the city you want and hit "search by city."
Then, select the quality measures you want on the left (all can be selected) and choose a hospital.
The first column shows the results for the top 10 percent of U.S. hospitals surveyed, the second column represents the top half of U.S. hospitals, and the third shows the hospital you chose.
