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Originally Posted by golfing eagles
Were you perhaps thinking of corynebacterium???
I agree, many of the metrics that go into the hospital "rating" (which btw is nothing more than to amuse the lay public, real problems are addressed in a different manner), are just plain bogus. My favorite is the "medication error" rate. If I prescribe a Tylenol for 6 PM, the nurse has to administer it between 5:30 and 6:30. if it is 1 minute late, it is counted as a medication "error" . What's worse, is that if the patient goes on to die during that admission from their underlying stage 4 pancreatic carcinoma 2 weeks later, the bean counters call that a death due to "medical error". And that's why they put out these absurd numbers like 500,000 people in the USA die from "medical errors" each year. It is, of course, complete nonsense, but it fits the political narrative that seems to be popular. As Chief of Staff, I always loved to report this crap to NY State 
The other problem is that some hospitals are more diligent in reporting than others, so the whole baseline can be skewed. The conditions the bean counters focus on are myocardial infarction, cerebrovascular accident and pneumonitis. They have so much garbage built into the criteria that it is almost medically meaningless, but again, it "shows the public" that the government is looking out for them.
Another rating metric that I also love is "readmissions within 30 days" for the same problem. A patient is admitted and treated successfully for CHF (congestive heart failure), and discharged home, where they proceed to eat 15 grams of sodium a day, so naturally they are back in 3 days. Somehow the bean counters consider that the fault of the hospital. Go figure! |
There was some kind of reality-based medical show several years ago, and on one episode, they looked at a guy who had repeat visits to the ER due to a dislocated shoulder. They'd pop it back in place, send him home with a Rx for pain meds, and he'd be back a few weeks later with a dislocated shoulder again.
Turned out he was addicted to painkillers and kept dislocating his shoulder on purpose just to get the prescription.
Imagine the ding on that hospital's record on just that one patient.