Published by: Lindsey Roth on 6/10/2011 11:12:30 AM
The May 2011 NAPH data brief describing how NAPH members perform on heart attack and heart failure quality performance measures may be surprising to those who are not familiar with our members. Our staff analyzed NAPH member average performance compared to the average performance of all hospitals nationally on two types of measures.
First we looked at process measures—how often hospitals provided established, evidence-based steps in the course of treating patients with heart failure and heart attack. The goal for each process measure is to achieve 100% performance, which means every patient received that recommended step during the process of their hospitalization. On average, NAPH members achieved a score of 95% or higher and met or exceeded the national average on all but two process measures. This type of data can and should be used to refute the argument that safety net hospitals provide lower quality of care.
Second, we analyzed outcome measures. The mortality and readmissions measures included in this article are the percentage of patients hospitalized for heart attack or heart failure that died or were readmitted within 30 days after being discharged from the hospital, regardless of the cause of death or readmission. In a perfect world, we would want mortality and readmission rates to be as close to zero as possible, but in reality that would be almost impossible.
Many other factors (in addition to the quality of care patients received during their hospitalization) are associated with a patient dying or being readmitted, including how advanced their disease may be, their age, access to primary care, etc. These issues make the public reporting of outcome measures much more controversial within the hospital industry.
Regardless of whether or not publicly comparing hospitals on outcome measures is a fair practice, NAPH members are tracking right along with other hospitals nationally on heart failure and heart attack outcome measures, even while caring for a higher percentage of vulnerable patients than the typical hospital. Data like this will hopefully start to dispel the myth that safety net hospitals are not up to par with the rest of the nation.