PATIENT SATISFACTION AND QUALITY OF CARE

The quality of health care remains an ongoing concern for consumers, payers, and policy makers. There are a number of national initiatives to measure quality and drive improvements in care. One initiative that has received significant attention is an effort by a group of purchasers known as the Leapfrog Group. (Sultz and Young) Founded in 2000, the Leapfrog coalition includes more than 65 employers and agencies that together purchase care for more than 34 million people. The Leapfrog Group has focused on measuring and reporting hospitals’ adoption of evidence based practices to improve patient safety. Through annual surveys, the program measures whether hospitals have adopted these practices and make the data publicly available on the Leapfrog Group Web site (http://www.leapfroggroup.org). One goal of the program is to direct consumers to hospitals that have adopted Leapfrog’s patient safety practices. Overall, I think it is useful for the public to have this information available. If you look at the website: http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/.It reports such statistics as percentage of hospital-acquired infections like line infections; hospital readmissions, surgical complications, etc...
However, a lot of it seems irrelevant and puts too much power on the patients. For example, if you put Mayo Clinic's two hospitals in Rochester, MN on their regarding Patient Survey answers, they score below average than average Minnesota hospitals and national average regarding patient satisfaction categories. Yet, Mayo is ranked #1 in US News as far as top hospitals in the nation are concerned. I think the public is not always ready to know what those numbers reflect: ie infection rates, length of hospitalization. The last time I saw such data in the newspaper, the best hospitals in Illinois were small hospitals in small towns. None of the Academic Institutions were rated very high... I may change my decision on a provider that I don't know if he or she is reported as having