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Best Children's Hospitals: Doctor Survey Ends
Tweet Share on Facebook March 28, 2013 CommentThe Best Children's Hospitals rankings, like the Best Hospitals rankings of adult centers, factor in specialists' opinions concerning the best sources of care for the sickest patients. The reputational survey that will supply these doctors' recommendations for the 2013-14 pediatric rankings, which are scheduled to appear in mid-June, has now closed. We're delighted — and grateful — to report that more than 52 percent of the surveyed physicians responded. This is at a time when doctors are busier than ever and might impatiently brush off efforts to get their views, yet the response rate was within less than two percentage points of the previous year's survey.
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Are There Too Many Hospital Rankings?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 20, 2013 CommentWhere can you go to find one list that names the "best cars"? The answer, of course, is obvious. There isn't one. What does "best" mean — best for short commutes or for interstate cruising? Best for a 16-year-old who just got her license or for a middle-aged male looking for fun? Best for reliability or for fuel economy?
Just as with cars, no single set of ratings or evaluations can adequately define hospital quality. A hospital that does a fine job delivering babies or performing routine bypass surgery may not be where to look for delicate lifesaving cancer surgery or state-of-the-art care for cystic fibrosis. Some ratings, like Leapfrog's, focus largely on safety; others, like the federal government's Hospital Compare, on compliance with generally accepted care standards. And still others, like HealthGrades, judge hospitals in individual conditions and procedures. A Kaiser Health News story raises the question, not for the first time, of whether the public is confused rather than guided by this proliferation of hospital rankings, ratings and reports.
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Do Hospital 'Likes' Translate to Quality?
Tweet Share on Facebook March 14, 2013 CommentCan it be that the number of "likes" on a hospital's Facebook page has something to do with the quality of the hospital? Could be, say researchers at the Healthcare Innovation and Techology Lab, a New York think tank.
They state in a recently published analysis that they found a "strong negative, statistically significant relationship" between the number of "likes" on the Facebook pages of 40 New York-area hospitals and the hospitals' 30-day heart attack death rates. The higher the number of likes, in other words, the greater the chance that a hospital had a lower mortality rate. "These findings have implications for researchers and hospitals looking for a quick and widely available measure" of hospital quality, the team stated in their study, which was published online in the "American Journal of Medical Quality."
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Best Children's Hospitals 2013-14: Progress Report
Tweet Share on Facebook March 12, 2013 CommentTo produce the medical data for the 2012-13 Best Children's Hospitals rankings, which are currently posted, U.S. News contractor RTI International sent a clinical survey to 178 pediatric centers. Ninety-seven centers, or 54.5 percent, completed the lengthy, detailed questionnaire. The allotted time for submitting the 2013-14 survey has now ended, and we are pleased to report that 109 of the 179 hospitals that received the survey responded, a jump to 60.9 percent.
The 11-part clinical survey takes the form of a general section and 10 individual specialty sections, from cancer to urology. Hospitals must complete the general section and at least one specialty section to be evaluated, because the information yielded by the clinical survey provides most of the grist for the Best Children's Hospitals rankings. A small part of each hospital's score is based on a reputational survey of 1,500 pediatric specialists, also conducted by RTI on behalf of U.S. News. That survey is still in the field, so we don't yet have final numbers on the response rate.
