Potential Bias in U.S. News Patient Safety Scores

By PETER PRONOVOST, MD Hospitals can get overwhelmed by the array of ratings, rankings and scorecards that gauge the quality of care that they provide. Yet when those reports come out, we still scrutinize them, seeking to understand how to improve. This work is only worthwhile, of course, when these rankings are based on valid measures. Certainly, few rankings receive as much attention as U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hospitals list. This year, as we pored over the data, we made a startling discovery: As a whole, Maryland hospitals performed significantly worse on a patient safety metric that counts toward 10 percent of a hospital’s overall score. Just three percent of the state’s hospitals received the highest U.S. News score in patient safety — 5 out of 5 — compared to 12 percent of the remaining U.S. hospitals. Similarly, nearly 68 percent of Maryland hospitals, including The Johns Hopkins Hospital, received the worst possible mark — 1 out of 5 — while nationally just 21 percent did. This had been a trend for a few years. What could account for this discrepancy? Could we all really be doing this poorly in my home state and in our hospital, where we take great pride in our efforts to prevent patient harm? After lengthy analysis, it seems quite clear that the answer is no. Instead, the patient safety score appears to have a bias against Maryland hospitals, because the data from our state is incomplete and not consistent with the data r...
Source: The Health Care Blog - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Uncategorized Bias Johns Hopkins Patient Safety Peter Pronovost US News and World Report Source Type: blogs