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Hospitals: your right to know.(Test inform protect: Consumers Union in action)
The hospital "report cards" discussed in this month's cover story, "How Safe Is Your Hospital?" on page 12, did not appear by accident. They are the result of an ongoing effort by consumer and employer groups and by labor unions to require states to collect and disseminate data that allow consumers to compare hospital quality. To date, 37 states have a mandate to provide some data on the quality of their hospitals.
Having this information can make a big difference to you. In New York and Pennsylvania, among the first states to release hospital-quality data, mortality rates for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery dropped as hospitals used the results to analyze their own internal quality processes. So public report cards serve a dual purpose: They help consumers shop with their feet--as they might do when buying a car or a refrigerator--and they give hospitals and doctors an incentive and tools to look more closely at themselves.
Almost eight years ago, Consumers Union's Southwest Regional Office helped to pass a bill creating the Texas Health Care Information Council to collect patient-level data from Texas hospitals. The first report was released in October 2002 and is on the council's web site, www.thcic.state.tx.us. Updates will be released annually.
Texas was the first state to use a tool developed by the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) to provide hospital-to-hospital comparisons on specific procedures and medical conditions linked to quality of care. New York has issued a similar report, available at www.myhealthfinder.com. All the measures compensate statistically for hospitals that treat patients who have more serious health problems than others.
Texas hospitals and doctors had long resisted making that kind of information ...
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