New York, NY, October 12, 2010—Comparative data on patient safety and hospital quality are available online for the first time, through WhyNotTheBest.org, The Commonwealth Fund's resource for reporting and comparing health care quality data. The new measures –developed by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, are available from data submitted by hospitals in nine states—Arizona, Florida, New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, and Washington. It is the most up-to-date available for each state and is comprehensive, including information from all payers—Medicare, Medicaid, and private insurers.
The patient safety indicators reflect quality of care for adults inside hospitals, and focus on potentially avoidable complications and medical mistakes. The inpatient quality indicators also reflect quality of care for adults inside hospitals and include inpatient mortality for selected medical conditions and procedures such as pneumonia, inpatient heart attack, and stroke. Users will be able to compare hospitals within and among states and make use of the case studies and improvement resources available on the Web site.
"Having this data publicly available and easily accessible allows health care providers to look broadly at health care quality and see not only where things aren't working, but also where outstanding care is being provided, and use that information to set benchmarks for performance," said Anne-Marie Audet, M.D. M.Sc., Vice President for Health Systems Quality and Efficiency at The Commonwealth Fund. "What makes this data so useful is that it includes all payers and is therefore a much more accurate measure of an organization's performance. It will also be posted close to the time care is delivered, allowing the information to be used quickly to take action on areas that need improvement."
WhyNotTheBest.org is free to registered users and is continually updated—new states will be added to this data set on an ongoing basis.
