Forbes asks “How Safe Are America’s Hospitals?”

Posted by Paul in Fortune, healthcare, hospital PR, hospital quality, hospital safety on 03 3rd, 2008 | no responses

Forbes magazine’s recent issue has a cover with a patient escaping from an ER, wearing only a paper johnny, and the text “Stop That Patient!  Big, risky hospitals don’t want you going to small rivals — where you could have safer, better surgery.”  You can read the article, entitled “Bad Medicine“, on Forbes’ website, but the message to me is clear: consumers want to understand the quality of care they can expect to receive before they check in.

I’ll admit to only a cursory understanding of the issues surrounding these physician-run hospitals and the legal implications of referring your own patients to a facility you have an economic stake in.  (Despite protests that such a conflict of interests can lead to unnecessary surgeries, one of the physician-run opponents, HCA, has itself been sued over excessive and unnecessary surgeries resulting from direct compensation plans to physicians under its employ.)

A growing trend we’ve been seeing for years is the need for consumers to understand their healthcare choices, options, and risks.  One of the top reasons that consumers visit hospital websites, according to a 2006 Forester survey, is to research hospital care and quality.  A shockingly small amount of hospitals provide any kind of this information, even spawning a sub-industry as a proxy for quality results — healthcare institutions pay large fees to HealthGrades for the analysis, reporting, and ranking of their hospitals on the numerous lists HealthGrades produce.

And the free market is rushing to fill the gap.  In addition to hospitals licensing HealthGrades results or paying for consumer-satisfaction surveys from Press Ganey, sites like NetDoc or Revolution Health are attempting to make sense of the confusing data surrounding patient outcomes to help consumers make decisions.

But the last line of the Forbes article really caught me and I’ll leave you with it here.   Forbes gives the parting shot in the argument to hand surgeon Blake Curd.  As a summation of why docs should be able to own hospitals, Blake throws down the gauntlet:  “Physicians innovate in health care,” he says.  “Hospital administrators do not.”