More on Public Reporting

A recent study in Health Affairs compared evaluations of 9 hospitals in the Boston area by 5 different web sites designed for consumers to assess quality of care. The web sites evaluated were Hospital Compare, Health Grades, Leapfrog, US News and World Report, and Massachusetts Healthcare Quality and Cost. The study investigators compared the quality ratings by each of these groups for 4 conditions (community acquired pneumonia, total hip replacement, percutaneous coronary intervention, and coronary artery bypass grafting). Interestingly, the quality assessments across the web sites were highly variable. In some cases, a hospital that was rated at the highest level of performance by one web site for a particular procedure or diagnosis was rated at the lowest level of performance by another web site. The bottom line is that until public reporting of healthcare quality data can be appropriately risk adjusted and validated, it is likely to be of little help to consumers.