In Health Affairs, Ashish K. Jha and Arnold M. Epstein have released a study in which they found a link between hospital boards that focused on quality of care and hospital quality ratings. They also found that quality isn’t a top priority for most hospital boards. The researchers hope their findings will help those who want to improve hospital quality by demonstrating just how much influence a hospital board can have.
Jha and Epstein surveyed 1,000 board chairs from a wide sample of not-for-profit acute-care hospitals in the United States. For quality ratings, they relied on the Hospital Quality Alliance.
Related
AHCJ President Charles Ornstein, whose hospital quality coverage has earned national recognition, recently updated his comprehensive “Road map for covering your local hospital’s quality” tip sheet.
AHCJ article: Making sense of hospital quality reports
Book: Covering the Quality of Health Care: A Resource Guide for Journalists
Slim guide: Covering Hospitals: Using Tools on the Web
Free online training
On the Beat: Covering Hospitals: An innovative simulation guides you through the sources and resources you need to tackle the beat. You’ll tap into the same tools that you’ll use on the job, and you’ll have a virtual mentor to walk you through the maze of reports, statistics and sources. One story line teaches you about reporting on hospital quality
Data
Investigating hospitals: Find stories with ready-to-use Hospital Compare data: AHCJ has made it easier for journalists to compare hospitals in their regions by generating spreadsheet files from the HHS database, allowing members to compare more than a few hospitals at a time, using spreadsheet or database software. AHCJ provides key documentation and explanatory material to help you understand the data possibilities and limits.
Tip sheets
- How to cover your local hospital – Overview of many organizations that offer hospital quality ratings
- Sorting out hospital rankings
- Intro to investigating health data using spreadsheets
- Computer-assisted reporting basics: Investigating health data using spreadsheets
Reports
- Study: Hospital quality comparisons are inconsistent
- Performance data may not affect patient decisions
- GAO report on reliability of hospital quality data reported to CMS
- 2007 state quality data available
- Hospital quality resources by state
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