Quality: Reporting Becomes Hospital-Specific

"We know that transparency is the trend, so we tried to craft something that we could live with and stand behind, and we hope that will foster continuous quality improvement," Ryan says.

"We have more and more a body of knowledge around patient safety and what we can do to keep people safe. I think there are expectations. This is a great start," says Carol Mullin, vice president for clinical quality with Virtua, which has four hospitals in New Jersey: the 433-licensed bed Virtua Memorial in Mt. Holly, 336-licensed bed Virtua Voorhees, 95-licensed bed Virtua Berlin, and 188-licensed bed Virtua Marlton.

The one drawback is that the base data is Medicare-only data, Mullin says. Her preference would be to have all-payer data that included all age groups. Also, the data is older—derived from 2007 New Jersey hospital discharge data—and therefore not as current. "But you have to start somewhere," she says.

Virtua, like many healthcare organizations, has been compiling its own internal quality and safety data for years. However, the benefit of adding state results "is that we are able to compare ourselves outside of our organization," Mullin says. "Safety indicators are some of the hardest to get external benchmarks for. So being able to know where you stand within the state—your own state—is very beneficial and very helpful."

James Dwyer, DO, Virtua's executive vice president and chief medical officer, anticipates that the diversity of what the state is measuring will continue to increase. "It's really a response to the public's demand for transparency."

"I think it's a good thing because besides the fact that it helps to reassure the general public [about safety], it gives us a chance to focus our attention on areas where we may need to try and improve," Dwyer says.

—Janice Simmons