As I noted in an earlier post, I’m currently working on a story about patient safety for Washingtonian about D.C.-area hospitals.
One of the places I started to research the piece was the website Hospital Compare. This site uses Medicare claims data from hospitals to determine outcomes of care and whether they are following procedures that are known to reduce the need to have patients readmitted for complications.
This site is great for anyone who has questions about the quality of their local hospital. All anyone needs to do is enter your zip code and then pick three of the closest hospitals to where you live, or the hospital you or a family member or friend might be going to for care. For me the three closest hospitals are Howard University, George Washington University and Washington Hospital Center. I checked the box for the three and then I got a comparison box with tabs on the left hand side. For patient safety, the most important of those four tabs is the one called “Process of Care Measures” which determines whether hospital staff are following a processes that are known to reduce complications, like giving a patient antibiotics one hour before surgery.
Of those three hospitals close to my home, Washington Hospital Center had the largest numbers of high scores for following processes correctly in surgery.
Thinking about going to hospital, I know is scary and daunting, but doing research before you or a family member or friend need to go to the hospital is a good thing.
(Photo from Creative Commons)
