You’ll hear lots of attention focused on the best hospitals, as rated by the U.S. News and World Report “America’s Best Hospitals” and the HealthGrades “America’s 50 Best Hospitals” and other groups.
Yet, do those ratings and all that attention really mean you’ll get better care?
According to new research in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons, patients can achieve similar outcomes to top-rated hospitals at high-volume hospitals closer to home.
The new research is the first such study to tackle the very interesting and important question of whether surgical outcomes at highly rated hospitals are indeed better than the outcomes at other US hospitals. After accounting for hospital volume, researchers found that the hospitals ranked highest by U.S. News and World Report no longer had significantly lower 30-day mortality rates for four cardiovascular procedures (abdominal aortic aneurysm repair, coronary artery bypass, aortic valve repair, mitral valve repair) compared with that of other hospitals.
“Both the U.S. News and World Report and HealthGrades quality rating systems are frequently used for hospital marketing. Our study shows that current hospital ratings systems are no better in judging the quality of hospitals than are procedural volumes,” said Nicholas Osborne, MD of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Osborne noted that continued research is needed to find better ways to help consumers measure surgical quality. Researchers indicated that while current ratings systems may help patients identify good hospitals, relying too heavily on the ratings may mean that some patients pick hospitals or other facilities that are farther from their homes instead of equally performing, high-volume hospitals that are closer.
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Post from: Blisstree