Alliance for Quality Health Care Releases Ratings for New York State Hospitals

The Alliance for Quality Health Care, an organization sponsored by 3,600 employers and 31 insurance companies, released a report Nov. 25 that rates the quality of medical procedures performed at more than 200 hospitals in New York, the New York Times reports. AQHC based the report, the "most comprehensive study of its kind" on New York's hospitals, on billing information that the hospitals reported to the state Department of Health in 2001 (Freudenheim, New York Times, 11/25). The report rated the hospitals on the quality of 25 procedures, such as caesarean sections, coronary bypass surgeries and hip replacement operations (Roy, Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, 11/25). For the report, AQHC commissioned researchers at Stanford University to adjust the results to account for differences among the hospitals in the "type of patients and how sick they were," based on a methodology used by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (New York Times, 11/25). The report compared the hospitals to a statewide average and awarded one, two or three stars for the quality of each of the procedures based on the comparison. However, the report did not rate hospitals on overall quality (Albany Times-Union, 11/25). The report, available online, allows consumers to select from a list of conditions or procedures and compare hospitals based on the number of procedures performed or on their outcomes. Each page on the Web site includes an explanation of quality indicators, such as more procedures performed or lower rates of mortality (Hughes, Albany Times-Union, 11/25).

Reaction
Bruce Boissonnault, executive director of the Niagara Health Quality Coalition, said that the report provides information on hospital quality that has "never been available" to consumers in the past. "This gives consumers information that hospital senior executives typically get," he said. Members of AQHC said that the report could prompt New York hospitals to focus on improvements in quality (Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin, 11/25). However, some consumer advocates and hospital representatives said that consumers should not use the results of the report to make a final decision on a hospital. "People should look at them. They should also talk to their physicians, and they should also talk to their friends that use the facility, before making a decision on things," Elmer Streeter, a spokesperson for St. Peter's Hospital in Albany, said (Albany Times-Union, 11/25). Some health care experts also questioned the methodology of the report. Dr. Mark Chassin, chair of the health policy department at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, said that the billing information used in the report did not cover several "important measures," such as care that patients received after they left the hospitals (New York Times, 11/25).