Tubby
11-09-2005, 09:21 PM
Web site lets consumers check performance record of Florida hospitals
Robyn Shelton, Orlando Sentinel Medical Writer
State health authorities Tuesday launched a new Web site intended to give consumers key information about the safety and quality of Florida's 287 hospitals.
Created for consumer ease, the site can be used to check a hospital's performance in more than 20 areas, including death rates for patients undergoing open-heart surgery, hip replacements, brain surgeries and other major operations. It also provides information on how often people suffer complications such as bed sores, blood clots in the lungs and hip fractures from falls in the hospital.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration, which created the site, praised it as a useful tool for comparing a hospital's record in treating heart attacks, strokes and other common problems.
Hospital officials, however, questioned the accuracy of the state's methods, saying that the site does not give a complete picture of what goes on inside their medical centers. They cautioned people against reading too much into the information.
The site -- www.floridacomparecare.gov (http://www.floridacomparecare.gov)-- attracted so much traffic in its first day that it quickly became overloaded and unavailable at times. During the first hour alone, there were more than 75,000 attempts to get information from the Web page.
When consumers log on to the site, they can find out whether a hospital performed better, worse or as expected in specific categories of care in 2004. They also can learn how many patients were treated at a center and how much it charged for an average visit.
"Before this Web site, consumers had very little ability to measure the performance of their health-care providers. So in that sense, I think this is going to be a very valuable tool for Florida consumers," said Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for the Agency for Health Care Administration.
The agency established the Internet tool at the direction of the Legislature, which passed a law last year requiring public disclosure of infection rates caused by medical care and other key data.
In the seven-county Central Florida region, for example, it found that three out of 38 hospitals failed to do at least as well as expected in preventing infections. They were Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, Lakeland Regional Medical Center and Winter Haven Hospital.
For mortality rates after heart attacks, 35 of the 38 hospitals performed better, or as expected. The remaining three -- Florida Hospital Orlando, Orlando Regional South Seminole and Lakeland Regional Medical Center -- all had "higher than expected" deaths from heart attacks.
The ratings were derived from billing data that show a history of diagnoses and procedures performed on each patient during a hospital stay. It is this source of information that is attracting strong criticism from the hospitals, which claim that such an approach does not take into account many factors that can affect the outcome of a patient's stay.
"There are limitations on the data that's used," said Rich Rasmussen, a spokesman for the Florida Hospital Association, an industry group in Tallahassee. "Consumers can use it as one source of information, but they shouldn't use it as the sole source."
For instance, the billing records do not include information about patients who refuse medical care. Sometimes dying patients specifically instruct medical personnel against reviving them if they have a heart attack.
So the rate of heart-attack deaths, detractors argue, is not enough to draw a conclusion about a hospital's level of care.
Dr. Lee M. Adler, a vice president at Florida Hospital, said he agrees with the intent of the Web site, which is needed to bring more "transparency" to what happens inside the state's health-care centers. But he thinks people should not rely too heavily on the data in judging a hospital.
"At best, the information is directional" and gives people an idea of things they might want to explore further, he said.
Adler and others pointed out that similar information on hospitals already is available at two other Web sites -- though every facility in Florida might not be listed.
Those two sites use other sources of data to evaluate hospital performance in similar areas. They are run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (www.cms.gov) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (www.jcaho.org).
Burns, with the state agency for health care, agreed that critics have justified concerns about Florida's method of rating hospitals. But he said the approach provides one more data point for people to consider as they make health-care decisions.
"I don't think this data alone should be used to determine which hospitals are good or which are necessarily bad," Burns said. "This is one piece of the puzzle that speaks to the quality of hospitals. Our hope is that it will stimulate questions from patients, and they will go into a hospital asking questions."
Consumer advocates applauded the site's introduction.
Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, president of the National Quality Forum, said the new Web site is a sign of the growing effort to give the public information that has long been kept secret.
But even so, Kizer said he sees inherent problems in using billing data to draw conclusions about a hospital's performance.
"The billing codes only tell you so much about the clinical side of things, and it can be misleading," Kizer said. "But the more information that consumers have, the better, in my view, so I'm all for it."
Robyn Shelton, Orlando Sentinel Medical Writer
State health authorities Tuesday launched a new Web site intended to give consumers key information about the safety and quality of Florida's 287 hospitals.
Created for consumer ease, the site can be used to check a hospital's performance in more than 20 areas, including death rates for patients undergoing open-heart surgery, hip replacements, brain surgeries and other major operations. It also provides information on how often people suffer complications such as bed sores, blood clots in the lungs and hip fractures from falls in the hospital.
The state Agency for Health Care Administration, which created the site, praised it as a useful tool for comparing a hospital's record in treating heart attacks, strokes and other common problems.
Hospital officials, however, questioned the accuracy of the state's methods, saying that the site does not give a complete picture of what goes on inside their medical centers. They cautioned people against reading too much into the information.
The site -- www.floridacomparecare.gov (http://www.floridacomparecare.gov)-- attracted so much traffic in its first day that it quickly became overloaded and unavailable at times. During the first hour alone, there were more than 75,000 attempts to get information from the Web page.
When consumers log on to the site, they can find out whether a hospital performed better, worse or as expected in specific categories of care in 2004. They also can learn how many patients were treated at a center and how much it charged for an average visit.
"Before this Web site, consumers had very little ability to measure the performance of their health-care providers. So in that sense, I think this is going to be a very valuable tool for Florida consumers," said Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for the Agency for Health Care Administration.
The agency established the Internet tool at the direction of the Legislature, which passed a law last year requiring public disclosure of infection rates caused by medical care and other key data.
In the seven-county Central Florida region, for example, it found that three out of 38 hospitals failed to do at least as well as expected in preventing infections. They were Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, Lakeland Regional Medical Center and Winter Haven Hospital.
For mortality rates after heart attacks, 35 of the 38 hospitals performed better, or as expected. The remaining three -- Florida Hospital Orlando, Orlando Regional South Seminole and Lakeland Regional Medical Center -- all had "higher than expected" deaths from heart attacks.
The ratings were derived from billing data that show a history of diagnoses and procedures performed on each patient during a hospital stay. It is this source of information that is attracting strong criticism from the hospitals, which claim that such an approach does not take into account many factors that can affect the outcome of a patient's stay.
"There are limitations on the data that's used," said Rich Rasmussen, a spokesman for the Florida Hospital Association, an industry group in Tallahassee. "Consumers can use it as one source of information, but they shouldn't use it as the sole source."
For instance, the billing records do not include information about patients who refuse medical care. Sometimes dying patients specifically instruct medical personnel against reviving them if they have a heart attack.
So the rate of heart-attack deaths, detractors argue, is not enough to draw a conclusion about a hospital's level of care.
Dr. Lee M. Adler, a vice president at Florida Hospital, said he agrees with the intent of the Web site, which is needed to bring more "transparency" to what happens inside the state's health-care centers. But he thinks people should not rely too heavily on the data in judging a hospital.
"At best, the information is directional" and gives people an idea of things they might want to explore further, he said.
Adler and others pointed out that similar information on hospitals already is available at two other Web sites -- though every facility in Florida might not be listed.
Those two sites use other sources of data to evaluate hospital performance in similar areas. They are run by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (www.cms.gov) and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (www.jcaho.org).
Burns, with the state agency for health care, agreed that critics have justified concerns about Florida's method of rating hospitals. But he said the approach provides one more data point for people to consider as they make health-care decisions.
"I don't think this data alone should be used to determine which hospitals are good or which are necessarily bad," Burns said. "This is one piece of the puzzle that speaks to the quality of hospitals. Our hope is that it will stimulate questions from patients, and they will go into a hospital asking questions."
Consumer advocates applauded the site's introduction.
Dr. Kenneth W. Kizer, president of the National Quality Forum, said the new Web site is a sign of the growing effort to give the public information that has long been kept secret.
But even so, Kizer said he sees inherent problems in using billing data to draw conclusions about a hospital's performance.
"The billing codes only tell you so much about the clinical side of things, and it can be misleading," Kizer said. "But the more information that consumers have, the better, in my view, so I'm all for it."