The following are nine stories on hospital quality reporting and benchmarking from December 2013 so far, starting with the most recent.
1. Nonpublic report cards did not effectively reduce in-hospital trauma mortality rates, according to a study published in JAMA Surgery.
2. The New York State Department of Health's sixth annual report on hospital-acquired infections has documented a continued decline in all infections except Clostridium difficile since 2007.
3. Forty states have earned an 'F' and seven states have earned a 'D' for transparency and quality of physician quality information in a new report from the nonprofit Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute.
4. URAC (formerly the Utilization Review Accreditation Committee) and The Leapfrog Group have released the winners of the second annual Hospital Website Transparency Awards Program at The Leapfrog Group's annual meeting. Winning hospitals have websites that "promote transparency of safety and quality measures in a manner that is useful and user-friendly for consumers," according to a news release.
5. Comprehensive quality data in hospitals is severely lacking, and this absence of information is hurting the patient population, according to an Op-ed article in The New York Times by Tina Rosenberg.
6. Too few emergency department quality measurements and a shortage of quality data are holding back emergency departments from potential improvements in quality of care, according to an article in Health Affairs.
7. California hospitals experienced slight declines in hospital-acquired infection rates between 2011 and 2012, according to the California Department of Public Health's Payers and Providers report: "Hospital Infection Rates Continue to Dip".
8. Just 10-15 percent of hospitals are able to offer price transparency to prospective patients, according to The Washington Post's coverage of research published in JAMA Internal Medicine.
9. The Leapfrog Group has announced its list of top hospitals for 2013 at its annual meeting today, which were chosen from a list of 1,324 hospitals participating in the Leapfrog Hospital Survey.
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