Two of the local hospitals in the Sacramento area were put on this list. The interesting thing is that in the community (and among those in health care), they really aren't known as the better hospitals. If one looks at other sites, like Hospital Compare, or HMO Report Card, and even the Joint Commission site, the honored hospitals rank below national average. I don't even think most of the hospitals in our area participated in this particular study.
My question is this -- do agencies like Solucient and Press-Ganey just take a large amount of cash from these health systems to make the hospitals 'honorary' so that the hospitals can be used as a marketing tool to attract patients and more business? Is that what these titles all boil down to, or is there some real merit behind this?
Specializes in Ambulatory | Management | Informatics.
Correct. My understanding is that you have to pay the agency to have your data included in the study. If you opt out, then they don't look at data pertaining to results from your hospital.
Where are you getting that 'understanding'. You must have some evidence then?
Fact is,, if they have say 800 hospitals in their surveys,, and there are 6 model criteria they catagorize then it doesnt take much to be in their top 100 of something (one category or another).
for the past decade, solucient has consistently identified benchmark practices by using solely objective statistical analyses of public data sources, and by constantly improving and refining the study performance measures, thresholds for inclusion, and methodologies.
the main steps we take in selecting the 100 top national benchmark hospitals are:
building the database of hospitals, including special selection and exclusion criteria: this study focuses on short-term, acute care, non-federal u.s. hospitals that treat a broad spectrum of patients. the data come from public sources including the medicare provider analysis and review (medpar) data set, the centers for medicare & medicaid services (cms) standard analytical file (saf) outpatient data set, and the medicare cost report.
classifying hospitals into comparison groups according to bed size and teaching status:
major teaching hospitals
teaching hospitals
large community hospitals
medium community hospitals
small community hospitals
[*]scoring hospitals on a set of weighted performance measures centered on clinical excellence, operating efficiency and financial health, and responsiveness to the community:
risk-adjusted mortality index
risk-adjusted complications index
risk-adjusted patient safety index
core measures score
severity-adjusted average length of stay
expense per adjusted discharge, case mix- and wage-adjusted
profitability (operating profit margin)
cash to total debt ratio
growth in patient volume
[*]determining the 100 top performers by ranking hospitals relative to their comparison group
I don't know about the money involved, but I do know that my hospital is on the Solucient list, the US News & World Report list for cancer, heart and heart surgery, and ENT, we are one of the top 100 companies to work for this year (I kinda laugh at that one), and we won some stupid Press Ganey award (as I'v stated, PG can kiss my you-know-what)...I don't know if that means anything, but if you are saying that some lists are better than others, I guess they have some things in common....maybe. I don't know how all of that works, but I hope to high heaven that they have more criteria than just $$.
I did clinicals at a "top 100 hospital" and the nurses there told me that it was paid for. I do not work there, and I did not do the research, but I do trust the nurse that told me this. Just sharing my experience.
I wondered the same thing as you, caeiluna. It could mean one of two things: (1) The NY hospitals are too cheap to pay for the "honor"; or (2) This committee doesn't think NY has good hospitals. How sad!!!!
I think NY has some excellent hospitals, however, it probably means we don't need to be on some list to show how worthy we really are of such an honor.
???? No NY hospital? I wonder how they came up with this list.
niccikatie
58 Posts
Where are you getting that 'understanding'. You must have some evidence then?