Poor, rural hospitals have higher death rates
Filed under: Health data, Health journalism, Hot Health Headline
USA Today’s Steve Sternberg and Jack Gillum expanded upon a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services report showing higher death rates at the nation’s worst hospitals, adding their own analysis showing that death rates are also higher at hospitals in low-income and low-population counties.
AHCJ publication
Covering Hospitals: Using Tools on the Web
Tip sheets
Tools for covering hospitals: Financial documents
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Ripping the cover off hospital finances
Computer-assisted reporting basics: Investigating health data using spreadsheets
Sorting out hospital rankings
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Consider source when reporting hospital rankings
HealthGrades, a health care ratings company, has released a report (PDF) that says “Medicare patients treated at top-rated hospitals nationwide across the most common Medicare diagnoses and procedures are 27 percent less likely to die, on average, than those admitted to all other hospitals.”
The report also names the hospitals that HealthGrades has deemed “Distinguished Hospitals for Clinical Excellence.”
That study (PDF) and the designations for hospitals are prompting a number of news articles reporting that local hospitals have been named as “top hospitals.”
But there are some things to think about when examining hospital rankings. For one thing, hospitals pay HealthGrades to use its information as promotional material. In addition, the data HealthGrades uses can be out of date and is based only on Medicare patients. A 2002 review found that “ratings on individual hospitals were often misleading.”
Charles Ornstein of ProPublica wrote a thorough tip sheet about how to cover your local hospital, including information about HealthGrades and other hospital rankings.
For a more balanced comparison of local hospitals, consider using the Hospital Compare patient survey data from the Department of Health and Human Services. AHCJ has made it easier for journalists to compare hospitals in their regions by generating spreadsheet files from the HHS database, allowing members to compare more than a few hospitals at a time, using spreadsheet or database software.
AHCJ provides key documentation and explanatory material to help you understand the data possibilities and limits. Need help analyzing Excel files? AHCJ offers a tutorial about investigating health data using spreadsheets.
Easier-to-use Hospital Compare data
The Sarasota Herald-Tribune’s David Gulliver was among several reporters who reported earlier this year about the U.S. Health and Human Services’ release of a new component of its Hospital Compare database - the results of a patient satisfaction survey announced at Health Journalism 2008 in March. He recently followed up using updated data in a more comprehensive story, analyzing all three components of the Hospital Compare database - “process” measures, or accepted standards of care; the patient survey; and “outcome” measures - the percentage of patients who died within 30 days of admission from heart attack, heart failure or pneumonia. HHS now updates the patient survey data quarterly, and AHCJ has made it easier for journalists to make their own comparisons. AHCJ has begun generating spreadsheet files, allowing members to use spreadsheet or database software with precision. AHCJ provides key documentation and explanatory material to help you understand the data possibilities and limits.
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