A group of us hospital administrators heard an excellent talk this morning by Dwight McNeil, the new MA Assistant Commissioner for Health Data Analytics in the state's Division of Health Care Finance and Policy (shown in picture). As you might expect, he showed us some interesting data, including the three charts above.We in Massachusetts tend to think we live in Lake Wobegon, always being above average, especially when it comes to health care delivery. Not so, as demonstrated quite clearly here. We look good versus the US as a whole, but not so against the other New England states, and worse so versus the best in class.
Interesting data, since at first glance I would expect Boston to be dominant in NE re quality of health care; not only that, the state is getting worse vs. other NE states. (Of course, that doesn't mean Boston is).
ReplyDeleteThe list of best performing states is also a bit surprising. I assume the data were vetted for all the usual suspects regarding severity of illness, baseline general health of population, etc.
nonlocal
Boston remains fettered to traditional medical education and practice that places little value on organization-level quality improvement. The exceptional efforts of BID and others face a strong current of resistance to measure and develop improvement systems. Until that changes, we should expect the numbers to reflect our provincialism, and to be left behind by innovating institutions across the country.
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