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August 29, 2008

The heart of healthcare

By Sean Bailey / Staff Writer

A revamped government Web site went online last week that allows the public to compare the services of up to three hospitals at a time — including data on hospitals’ mortality rates for common diseases.

According to the site, www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, the Tri-County’s three hospitals — Baptist Regional Medical Center in Corbin, Saint Joseph London and Knox County Hospital in Barbourville — all fell within the U.S. national rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia death rates.

The mortality rates were calculated on statistics that hospitals voluntarily provided to the government. The data displayed on the site was last updated on June 27, 2007.

The site also displays “care measures” for surgical care, heart attack treatment and heart failure treatment, which detail how often a health care provider gives patients the treatment known to give the best results for a particular condition.

For example, under the surgical care “process of care measures,” the site lists data for the “percent of surgery patients who received preventative antibiotics one hour before surgery.”

In the Tri-County, 88 percent of 276 patients at BRMC received antibiotics one hour before incision, while 98 percent of 228 patients at St. Joesph in London received antibiotics. Data was not available for Knox County Hospital, which is classified as a “critical access” hospital.

Rebbeca Lewis, CEO at Knox County Hospital, explained that Knox County Hospital is smaller and operates differently from its Tri-County counterparts.

Knox County is licensed for a smaller number of patient-ready beds — only 25 — and is required to limit patients stays to three days or less.

“The role of a critical access hospital is to provide emergency care, triage services and to ship patients to larger hospitals,” Lewis said.

Thus, Knox doesn’t report the same data that acute care facilities — including BRMC and St. Joseph — report. Lewis, though, is confident with her hospital’s data.

“Next year we are going to voluntarily report more of our information because we think our results are pretty darn good for a small, critical access hospital,” she said. “I think if you compare us to the other critical across the state, we perform very well.”

Sharon Hershberger, public affairs director for St. Joseph in London said the hospital encourages people to look at the site, which shows that St. Joseph had high percentages in the majority of care measure categories.

“The data helps us take a snapshot of our quality of services compared to other hospitals and helps drive use to improve our quality,” Hershberger said.

Of the Tri-County hospitals, BRMC was the only one that provided patient survey results. The survey, which is officially called the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare and Systems (HCHAPS), asks patients about their experiences with caregivers, is designed to produce comparable data on the patient’s perspective on the care they received.

At BMRC, 82 percent of patients surveyed reported that their doctors “Always communicated well.”

The survey produced less positive results when it came to noise volume in patient rooms, with only 42 percent reporting that “the area around their room was ‘always’ quiet at night.”

Fifty-seven percent of patients surveyed gave BRMC a nine or ten on overall quality, with ten being the highest rating. Sixty-three percent also reported that they would definitely recommend the hospital.

“We are always working on improvement areas, and sharing the survey results helps us with those areas,” said BRMC spokesperson Debbie Hardin.

The Web site is a joint effort between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) which is an agency of the U.S. Health Department, and Hospital Quality Alliance.

HQA is a group of organizations that represent everyone from consumers, doctors and nurses and federal agencies, all of whom work to promote the reporting of hospital quality of care.

The site can be found at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

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