Healthcare Transparency at Your Fingertips
With the trend toward employees being responsible for a larger portion of healthcare expenses, the need for transparency in healthcare has become more important in helping them become better healthcare consumers. If you needed heart bypass surgery, for example, how would you choose a hospital? How would you determine the death rate, length of stay and cost of a certain healthcare facility? Previously, most consumers have relied on their doctor to make a recommendation without asking these questions. But today, online mechanisms for communicating hospital quality and performance are becoming more abundant, putting more knowledge at the fingertips of the consumer.
Federal Hospital Compare Online
While not all hospitals provide their own information on performance and quality, such data can be found at the Hospital Compare website (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov) provided by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). This site includes information on 26 quality measures, including patient satisfaction and the cost of specific procedures. Recent additions to the site include pediatric asthma measures and outcome mortality measures for pneumonia and heart failure.
The site gathers information via the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospital Survey – the first national, standardized, publicly-reported survey of patient perspectives on care experienced during a hospital stay. This survey is based on national standards for performance measurement and reporting created by the Hospital Quality Alliance and the National Quality Forum in cooperation with the federal government.
Information on North Carolina Facilities
Consumers seeking information on North Carolina hospitals can visit the NC Hospital Quality Performance Report online at www.nchospitalquality.org. Developed by the NC Quality Center (with support from the NC Hospital Association and the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence), this report includes 105 non-federal, general acute-care hospitals in North Carolina and is updated on a quarterly basis. It provides optimal care scores, which represent the total number of patients receiving all care measures versus the total number of patients qualifying for any care, including heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and surgical care. The site includes a section that identifies hospitals that are determined to be “Highly Reliable” based on their optimal care score across time, and there is even a designation for “Most Improved” per condition.
Such information is also the basis of a new project to improve the surgical facilities in North Carolina. The NC Quality Center and the Carolinas Center for Medical Excellence are facilitating a collaborative NC Surgical Care Improvement Project with statewide partners to reduce surgical complications and improve performance on surgical care processes of care.
Transparency a Win-Win for Employees and Employers
Accessible transparency tools are becoming more abundant, and even certain medical carriers have their own online resources for the use of covered members. The intent of these resources is to improve consumer choice and motivate providers to improve quality of care, but the end result could significantly impact claims costs. Employees who receive high quality care experience fewer repeat hospitalizations, hospital-acquired infections and medical errors. Thus, the use of these tools would not only result in improving the quality of the medical outcome, but it would also help to lower the claims cost – something that will always prove valuable to employers.
For more information on this topic, please click on the following links…
Official Release on Hospital Compare
Transparency Provides Better Look at Healthcare
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December 5, 2008
Hill, Chesson & Woody strives to keep our clients' group decision makers abreast of trends influencing the employee benefits market. Look for Eyes on Benefits to bring you news and information affecting you and your employees.
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