To better prepare hospitals and doctors for the scrutiny they will get from public reporting in the next few years, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation on Tuesday launched a website that compiles state, federal, hospital and health plan quality data from across the country: 224 separate sites and growing.
The foundation says the database is the "nation's most comprehensive online directory for patients (and others) to find reliable information on the quality of healthcare provided by physicians and hospitals in their communities."
"All of this information is designed to help everyone get ready for a time when we're much more focused on tilting the system for delivering high value, rather than high volume, care, which is what we're paying for right now. That's what this website is all about," Michael Painter, MD, the foundation's senior program officer said in a telephone interview.
Painter added that multiple sites contain quality performance measures on physicians, hospitals, and ambulatory care services in each state, and national comparative data.
"The nice thing is that if you live in one of these states, you may not be aware of all these information resources that are available to you."
Painter added, "Nobody, including our hardworking and fantastic healthcare workforce, wants to be rated and have this displayed publicly. But we all know we have quality variation and safety problems, and we all know that keeping that in the dark and in secret isn't working for us."
For example, he pointed to Wisconsin, which lists 13 separate reports, seven for hospitals and four for physicians. California has 14 separate websites, some operated by the California Healthcare Foundation which list hospital procedure costs, while others are operated by health plans such as BlueShield of California or HealthNet.
California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development data, the largest hospital outcome archive in the nation, is listed as well, with two websites, one showing surgical mortality and another showing hospital charges.
"This is a picture of the facts as they are today," he said.
Painter said that the foundation also hopes the website will put subtle pressure on institutions in states that now offer little comparative information to improve the amount and quality of the information on healthcare they disclose.
"There's a lot of variation in what states report," he noted. "For example, you can look at Mississippi and see one report on whether physicians licensed to practice in the state have performance scores that are lower, higher or at the community average. "But there's nothing for hospitals."
Likewise for the entire state of Texas, there are only three sets of data, three for hospitals but nothing for physicians. Florida, one of the largest states in the nation, has only two.
The site also offers links to national databases, such as the Dartmouth Atlas, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' HospitalCompare and The Leapfrog Group.
Some of the data sets are more "wonkish," with detailed information that only healthcare data specialists would understand. While other sites are more consumer friendly, he said.
The foundation hopes that consumers, who have not up to now been known to use such websites to make choices about their healthcare providers, will begin to do so, Painter said. It might help, for example, a patient with diabetes who looks at some of these measures say to him or herself, "I see these scores, but I'm not getting the kind of care that these measures say I should have. Why not?"
The site excludes top 100 lists that are composed of information that is not objective, such as the U.S. News & World Report annual rankings of top facilities. Nor does it include Yelp or Angie's List commentaries, which are filled with opinion rather than fact and therefore did not meet the foundation's criteria, Painter said.
He added that the website is the culmination of the foundation's five years of work on quality, and efforts to get "all players to come to the common table, and agree that quality of care in our communities is a problem and we all want to improve.
"We agree that we need to measure it and publicly report it. And if there are worries, find a way to get those resolved. Is it fair, is it accurate, and is it timely."
See Also:
Thomson Reuters Names Top 10 Health Systems
Top 100 Hospitals Named by Thomson Reuters
Top Community Hospitals Named