Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/763161
29 QUALITY MEASUREMENT Meridian Health Launches Quality Reporting Website In Name of Transparency, Improvement By Heather Punke A s patients' appetites grow for qual- ity metrics from their healthcare providers, so have the number of sources they can look to for that informa- tion. In addition to CMS' Hospital Com- pare, several other ratings organizations and companies publish publicly reported hospital quality data, and it can be confus- ing for patients to know what information is helpful and where to find it. Patients of Hackensack (N.J.) Meridian Health, however, are in luck. ey don't have to look further than Meridian Health's website for that information. Starting in June, Meridian Health made performance reports on all seven of its hos- pitals available online at MeridianHealth. com/Quality. (While Hackensack and Meridian Health merged in June, for now, quality information is only available for Meridian Health's legacy hospitals.) "I felt like it was important to be more transparent with our community, and we wanted to also begin to educate our com- munity on some of the things that we felt were important when making healthcare decisions," says Marty Scott, MD, co-chief quality officer of Hackensack Meridian Health. e fact that patients are increas- ingly taking on more financial responsibili- ty for their care also played a role in getting the quality data website off the ground. "Consumers are going to have 'skin in the game,' so we felt like we needed to get ahead of that so they have the opportunity to make informed decisions," he says. Members of the community even played a role in shaping the quality website: e Meridian Health team queried community members on what kind of information they would find useful when making their own healthcare decisions. Dr. Scott and his team also sought input from senior leaders at the hospitals and the physician community before taking the project up the chain of command to the board. e whole process, from concept to its June launch, took about nine months. e final report cards include information already publicly reported elsewhere. e website displays patient experience scores (pulled from five HCAHPS questions), readmission rates and rates of certain healthcare-associated infections for each Meridian Health hospital. One of the advantages of Meridian Health reporting its own data is that it is much newer than the data displayed by Hospital Compare and other sources. While Hos- pital Compare data can be over a year old, the data on MeridianHealth.com/Quality is two to three months old. "It's already out there, but it's old… [and] very confusing," Dr. Scott says. "Now we own it, and put it into a format we believe would be easier for folks in our community to understand, and it's more current." Keeping data more current allows Merid- ian Health to more immediately show pa- tients progress its hospitals are making on HAIs, readmissions and patient experience improvement. "We want people to be engaged with our opportunity for improvement," Dr. Scott says. "ey'll see some data that looks really good, but also [data] that could be better, and we know it can be better, and we're working on it." Down the road, Dr. Scott sees potential for the website to evolve into something more. For one, Meridian is considering adding physician ratings to its website, similar to what University of Utah Health Sciences in Salt Lake City and Mount Sinai Health System in New York City have done. Further, he says the medical staff is inter- ested in posting non-publicly reported data by service line, which would give the community a better sense of what to expect if they encounter a specific health event, like a heart attack or hip replacement. Either way, Meridian's quality website will help "tell a comprehensive story" so consumers can make educated decisions about their care with the most up-to-date information available. n Consumer Hospital Rankings May Draw on False Data, Study Finds By Brian Zimmerman B ala Hota, MD, an associate pro- fessor at Rush University School of Medicine in Chicago, and col- leagues have identified incongruities in U.S. News & World Report's patient safety ratings among high-transfer and high-volume hospitals, according to a study published in The Joint Commis- sion Journal on Quality and Patient Safety. The authors of the study began their research after Rush University Medical Center received the lowest ranking possible for patient safety in the 2015-16 U.S. News' 2015-16 "Best Hospitals" rankings. Examina- tion revealed data from U.S. News & World Report displayed many more patient safety events, like pressure ulcers, than the hospital had tracked. Dr. Hota and his colleagues discov- ered U.S. News & World Report data included patient health issues in their tally for RUMC even when the issues were present prior to admission. When Dr. Hota and his team inves- tigated further, they found false accounting for safety events by U.S. News & World Report was common for hospitals with high volumes of patients and high transfer rates. Since the findings, U.S. News & World Report has made changes to its methodology and data sources. In a companion editorial, David M. Shahian, MD, from Massachusetts General in Boston, Elizabeth Mort, MD, from Women's Health Associates in Boston and Peter J. Pronovost, MD, PhD, of Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore, reflected on the study. The editorial authors concluded, "Just as healthcare providers have ethical and moral responsibilities to the public they serve, rating organizations and journalists that grade providers have similar obligations — in their case, to ensure measure validity and methodological transparency." n