Tuesday, February 25, 2014

There is a non-zero chance of problems


In contrast, in a under-performing hospital, they would say, "The data are wrong," and "Our patients are sicker," and then give up.

Back in 2009, I wrote: The fear of transparency clouds all. That still applies in all too many places.

3 comments:

  1. Paul - There are a lot of these throw away lines that hospitals and systems use and nobody calls them on it. Take Steward for example. They continue to promote the idea that they are "lo cost, high quality" and just expect people to take this as truth. It is not. They are one of the lowest performing networks on the BCBS AQC quality scores and they are probably second tier in terms of cost.... not of their own doing, they just can't get the contracts that Partners and BI get from the insurers like BCBS, HPHC and Tufts. So Steward is more low quality, medium cost but no one ever calls them on this. Just another example of people falling back on statements to prevent the tough actions that require actual change in a hospital and physician setting.

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  2. True. For the most part, the media just reports what they say.

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  3. In fact, the just-released CMS ACO quality metrics (available via Physician Compare) show that Steward was below the national 5th percentile on 4 of 5 measures, and below the 20th percentile on the 5th.

    by comparison, Atrius looked best(90+ percentile for 3 of 5), with Harbor, Partners and Jordan close behind. BIDCO was between the national 40th and 75th percentiles. MACIPA disappointed me, with 2 scores below 25th percentile.

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