Rosa Baier updates us:
Rhode Island's Department of Health currently reports clinical quality measures and patient satisfaction for nursing homes, home health agencies, and hospitals. The 2007 satisfaction reports for nursing homes and home health agencies have both been updated within the past 2 months:
Home health:
http://www.health.ri.gov/chic/performance/homehealth/index.php#satisfaction
http://www.health.ri.gov/media/080529a.php
The American Medical Association (AMA): recently launched the Cure for Claims campaign to help improve processing medical claims with health insurers. They have created their first National Health Insurer Report Card on claims processing.
The Report Card illustrates the claims processing performance of Medicare and seven national commercial health insurers:
The Commonwealth Fund has launched state scorecards on children’s health system performance. Thirteen performance indicators of access, quality, costs, equity, and the potential to lead healthy lives were measured.
The Commonwealth Fund has illustrated an interactive United States map providing state-specific details for consumers.
OutofPocket.com, a technology startup dedicated to promoting health care transparency and competition, announced the launch of its new search engine. The search engine enables consumers to look up prices and comparison shop for health care services by searching for price data across websites.
An earlier version of their website was launched in July 2007. It provided consumers with a platform to collaborate and expose the true prices of routine health care services.
The Healthcare Association of New York State (HANYS) released a study to assess and score of eight prominent government, not-for-profit, and for-profit hospital quality reports. They included New York health care practitioners and quality experts. HANYS reported three out of the eight major hospital quality reports scored better than a “B”.
ihealthbeat:Illinois Doctor Profile Web Site Includes Malpractice Data
Illinois has recently developed a new Web site that provides consumers with information about physicians in the state. According to the Springfield State Journal, they provide information on any malpractice judgments and out-of-court settlements in the last five years.
The Web site also offers information about physicians':
ihealthbeat:
Oklahoma Develops Web Site Rankings of State Nursing Homes: Oklahoma's Governor Brad Henry, unveiled a new state Web site that rate the quality of care of the state's nursing facilities and ranks the facilities from one to five stars.
The site provides ratings on 10 measures-some include:
US News and World Report: Hospitals Compare on Patient Satisfaction
According to the article, roughly two thirds of all hospitals submit their data and only about 100 opted to suppress it. Hiding the information will not be permitted for future submissions. Hospitals that opt out will find their Medicare reimbursements for inpatient care cut by 2 percent starting July 2008.
Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ): AHRQ's State-by-State Health Care Performance
To assist health leaders an annual annual analysis has been developed to identify areas of health care delivery that need quality improvement. It now includes important information such as each State's rate of obesity, health insurance coverage, mental illness and the number of specialist doctors.
A new state Web site with information and key quality measures on home health care services and hospice care statewide, was launched today, to help people find appropriate care for themselves and their loved ones.
Richard F. Daines, M.D. (State Health Commissioner) stated that the New York State Home Health and Hospice Profile Web site, homecare.nyhealth.gov, are designed for users to easily obtain important information on home care and hospice services.
iHealthBeat: The federal government's Hospital Compare Web site will expand to include patient opinions based on satisfaction surveys conducted at nearly all hospitals, from later this month.
Modern Healthcare Online: Patient safety improved at an annual rate of only 1% from 2000 to 2005, according to a new report by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
iHealthBeat: The South Dakota House approved a bill that would expand the state's hospital price reporting system by adding outpatient data to the state Web site (hospitalpricing.sd.gov). The existing Web site includes prices for the 25 most commonly performed procedures at each hospital in the state.
Massachusetts State health regulators yesterday approved a plan to issue report cards on infection rates for each hospital and to post that information on a state government website, reports The Boston Globe. It is not clear when the information will be posted on a website, in part because the Department of Public Health and another agency are considering combining quality data on a single site.
The Michigan Health & Hospital Association (MHA) has launched their new Web site. As previously blogged, the MI Hospital Inform Web site (www.mihospitalinform.org) enables consumers to review charge, payment, and quality information about 146 hospitals in Michigan.
The launch of this Web site is an effort to increase transparency and hold hospitals accountable to consumers, reports the Heartland Institute.
Do you have some health care transparency news you want to share? Send it to us! Do you publish a health care report card? Let us know when you update your report.
Comarow on Quality
Consumer Health Ratings
Department of Health Policy News (David Nash)
Managed Care Contracting
OutOfPocket
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