Internet Case—Evaluating the Quality of Health Care. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services maintains the Web site www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, which provides an array of process of care and outcome of care measures that report on how well individual hospitals are caring for their patients, compared with state and national benchmarks.
Required
a. Access the Web site shown above and describe the medical and surgical categories for which process of care and outcome of care quality measures are reported.
b. At the Web site, click on “Find and Compare Hospitals” and locate quality of care data for two hospitals in your city or geographic area. Evaluate that data and explain how the quality of care scores of each of those hospitals compares with the average scores for your state and the nation.
c. Explain how such factors as patient mix, occupancy rate, average length of stay, payor mix (i.e., Medicare, Medicaid. third-party insurers, self-pay, and charity care), and the hospital’s financial condition may affect the quality of care. Did any of these factors impact, in your judgment, the quality of care scores received by the two hospitals you selected for analysis?