Proposed legislation in Connecticut would, for the first time, require errors and avoidable complications to be reported publicly for each hospital and surgical center. Connecticut hospitals have reported serious but preventable errors identified by the National Quality Forum or the state since 2004, but only statewide figures are public.

Read more: Bill No. 248 An act concerning adverse events at hospitals and outpatient surgical facilities

HealthGrades named America’s 50 Best Hospitals for 2010 in its annual report, which examined objective patient outcomes over three years at all 5,000 of the nation’s nonfederal hospitals. Finding from their research indicate the 50 Best Hospitals had mortality rates that were, on average, 27 percent lower than other hospitals.

IPRO and Bridges to Excellence (BtE) have released a seventh Care Link module on the IPRO eServices Clinical Data Portal (http://pao.ipro.org). The newest care link allows practices to apply for recognition of outstanding care for patients with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease. Existing modules include Diabetes, Cardiac, Hypertension, Conorary Artery Disease, Asthma and Congestive Heart Failure Care Links. For more information, visit http://pao.ipro.org.

Legislation being considered by the public health committee would require medical mishaps reported by state hospitals to finally be made public. Legislation introduced in 2002 required hospitals in Connecticut to report adverse events. In 2004, the legislature rewrote the law, narrowing the list of events that must be reported and included provisions to keep reports secret unless they were investigated.

The County Health Rankings—the first set of reports to rank the overall health of every county in all 50 states—were released today by the University of Wisconsin’s Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (www.countyhealthrankings.org). The online ranking include snapshots of U.S. counties with a color-coded map that compares each county’s overall health with other counties in each of the 50 states.

Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals (DHH) launched www.HealthFinderLA.gov, which provides information on the cost, quality and performance of health care facilities such as hospitals and nursing homes, as well as health plans and prescription drugs. The site will provide key performance data on health care facilities and health plans, including death rates, readmission rates, dozens of nationally accepted quality and performance measures for health plans, and complication rates for procedures.

CConsumer Reports and the Leapfrog Group have released quality data on central-line infections for intensive-care units, at 926 hospitals in 43 states. CLABSI data for ICUs is voluntarily reported by some hospitals to the leapfrog Group. State reports include Colorado, Delaware, Maine, Missouri, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Vermont and Virginia

Nursing home quality data on CMS Nursing Home Compare has been updated to report quality data with the following reporting time periods:

January 1, 2009 through September 30, 2009
Percent of long-stay residents whose need for help with daily activities has increased
Percent of long-stay residents who have moderate to severe pain
Percent of high-risk long-stay residents who have pressure sores
Percent of low-risk long-stay residents who have pressure sores
Percent of long-stay residents who were physically restrained

Tennessee Department of Health released 2008 report on the state's hospitals CLABSI infections rates. This is the first report since the hospitals started actively collecting and sharing data with the state on the count of bloodstream infections in intensive care patients with central lines.

Read full report: Tennessee's Report on Healthcare Associated Infections - January to December 2008

HealthGrades, a healthcare rating organization, has released its 8th Annual Hospital Quality and Clinical Excellence report which examines patient outcomes for 26 medical procedures and diagnoses at all 5,000 nonfederal hospitals in the U.S., based on 40 million hospitalization records from 2006, 2007 and 2008 obtained from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. For each hospital, risk-adjusted mortality and complication rates are evaluated across 26 procedures and diagnoses, from heart attack treatment to valve-replacement surgery to total knee replacement.

More than 13,000 healthcare-associated infections – illnesses that often can be prevented – were reported by Pennsylvania hospitals in the second half of 2008, according to initial data released today by the Department of Health (2008 Report: Healthcare-Associated Infections (HAI) in Pennsylvania Hospitals).

Washington State Department of Health has published the infection rates - central lines and ventilator-associated pneumonia - for hospitals statewide on its Web site (Healtcare Associated Infections Program). The state's new Web site was mandated by law in 2007. Twenty-six states, including Washington, now require hospitals to report infections that occur in their institutions. In widely varying degrees, most of those states make the data available to the public.

The latest data update to the New York State Hospitals Profile Web site (hospitals.nyhealth.gov), which included updates to quality and inspection data, was published today. Hospital quality measures reported are for time-period April 1, 2008, to March 31, 2008

Also included in this data update were:

* Hospital surveillance data updated to report citations and complaints from January 1, 2005 through March 31, 2009.
* Number of procedures performed from July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009.

Mike Martin updates us:
On December 17, 2009, the Utah Department of Health (UDOH) Health Data Committee released its annual reports that compare hospital care for newborns and their others as well as for heart, stroke, hip, knee, and pneumonia patients. Utahns can use the reports to compare hospital performance on measures like in-hospital deaths and injuries as well as average charges.

Full story and links to the reports at http://health.utah.gov/uthealthnews/2009/20091217-HospitalComp.html

A state law in Ohio (2006)requires hospitals to provide quality and pricing information to the Ohio Department of Health. The DOH plan to release a consumer-friendly Web site, called Ohio Hospital Compare (located on www.odh.ohio.gov), with this information on Jan 1, 2010.

The site will feature more than 100 quality measures, including mortality and infection rates and how often specific medical procedures are performed at a hospital.