Quote:
Originally Posted by eschiavo
AGE SHOULDN’T DETERMINE THE QUALITY OF CARE !!! A few years ago they were rated a 1 and one of the worse hospitals in the US. If I can find the article will post it. A Few weeks ago was in West Marion hospital the care was remarkable and top notch. You don’t know what excellent care is until you experience it. Of the two hospitals Leesburg is somewhat better. Don’t think Shands was able to turn the care around due to staffing problems. On the positive side and in all fairness there are some good nurses who really do care 👍…we just need more of them.
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If only that were true, but it's not.
When the metrics that CMS uses to measure "quality" of care,(and the validity of that measurement is a whole different discussion), is dependent on mortality and readmission data, age plays a huge role in the "rating". You will also find that large inner city public hospitals rate very low as well---because the patient population in their catchment area generally presents with more advanced disease, they are less likely to comply with follow up instructions and visits, and have multiple other co-morbidities and lifestyle disadvantages.
Not to dive into the CMS ratings too deeply, generally they have been outcome based on 4 conditions, usually CHF(congestive heart failure), CAP(community acquired pneumonitis), CVA (stroke), and sepsis(bacteremia whether community acquired or nosocomial(hospital acquired)). They throw in some measurements of post-op complications, medication "errors" (which generally are not errors at all), and of course readmissions and mortality. The system depends on the hospital itself reporting their data to the government, and frankly some hospitals(generally the larger, better funded ones) are very adept at the manner in which they gather and report their data. Also hospitals that are more or less protected from state and CMS oversight whether for administrative or political reasons do better in ratings(the only examples I have first hand knowledge of is the NYC Health and Hosp Corp facilities. Since they were more or less exempt from NY state oversight, inspections and penalties, they generally didn't even bother to report their data, leading to a 0.00% complication rate and 100% compliance
). Furthermore, there is generally about a 2-3 year lag before one could see any movement in these ratings.
Bottom line: These "ratings" are not necessarily an accurate measurement of the "quality" of a hospital