Study Questions Value of Hospital Ratings

Publicly reported hospital quality ratings do not always reflect the outcomes of patients treated at certain medical centers, according to a study in the current issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, conducted by the Yale University School of Medicine, looks at 2002-2003 data from 962 hospitals on heart attack patients who were age 66 or older. The study analyzes the seven process measures commonly used to assess hospital care quality for patients with acute myocardial infarction. The study finds that the measures "explain only 6% of the variation in hospitals' short-term mortality rates for AMI patients older than 65." Results "point to the shortcoming of current systems of public reporting" and highlight the need for other measures, such as "risk-standardized mortality rates and more fully characterized hospital performance. This finding suggests that a hospital's short-term mortality rates after [heart attack] cannot be reliably inferred from performance on the publicly reported process measures," the Yale researchers said.