|
|
In this tool, Veterans, family members, and caregivers can find information about how well VA
hospitals care for patients with certain medical conditions. This information will help you compare the
quality of care that VA hospitals provide. Talk to your doctor about this information to help you, your family,
and your friends make your best hospital care decision.
The information on this website comes from all VA hospitals. All VA hospitals are required to provide this
quality information for VA HospitalCompare to make public. This site is for Veterans, family members and their caregivers to
compare the performance of their VA hospitals to other VA hospitals.
|
| |
|
This site currently allows
patients and/or their families to review their hospital’s
performance on three diagnoses,
Congestive Heart Failure (CHF),
Heart Attack, and
Pneumonia. For this website, hospital performance
is based on two areas:
mortality (or death) measures
and
readmission measures.
|
| |
|
|
Please make
your initial Selection |
| |
|
|
|
How to
use the Hospital Compare
Application |
| |
1) Select the state you or
your family are/will be
receiving care |
| |
2) Select one of three
common medical problems for
which you or your family
might be receiving care (Congestive
Heart Failure (CHF),
Heart
Attack, or
Pneumonia) |
|
What do the outcome
measures tell me? |
| |
Mortality Measures
- One way
to evaluate a hospital is to
compare the 30 day mortality
(or death) rates between
hospitals. Since some
hospitals admit a larger
number of really sick
patients, we need a way to
make the mortality
comparison fair. To account
for differences in the
numbers of really sick
patients, the mortality
rates are “adjusted” to take
into account how sick
patients are. This is done
by including things like
age, how many other diseases
each patient has and so on.
This “adjustment,” which is
done using complex math,
creates a fair comparison
between hospitals, so
patients and their families
can make educated decisions
about where they are
receiving their care.
Readmission Measures
- Another way to evaluate a
hospital is to look at
readmission, or how often
patients return to that
hospital for more inpatient
care soon after discharge
from the hospital. Because
some hospitals have sicker
patients than other
hospitals, these readmission
measures are
risk
adjusted to
account for differences in
the number of really sick
patients between hospitals.
A patient is counted as
being readmitted if that
patient ends up admitted to
the same VA hospital
or any other VA hospital
within 30 days after the day
the patient was admitted. It
doesn’t matter if the
patient is admitted again
for the same or different
reason, both count.
|
| |
|
|
**For example, if you are searching
for pneumonia rates in California,
you would choose California and
Pneumonia in the drop down box and
see where the hospitals in
California rank compared to other
VA’s and hospitals in a similar
geographic region.
Once you make your selection you
will see how each hospital rates compared
to other VA Hospitals |
|
|
|
|
Process
of Care Measures |
| |
The Hospital Process of Care Measures shows how
often hospitals give recommended treatments known to get the
best results for patients with certain medical conditions or
surgical procedures. Information about these treatments are
taken from the patients’ records and converted into a
percentage. This is one way to compare the quality of care
that hospitals give.
The hospital process of care measures
include:
The measures are based on
scientific evidence about treatments that are known to get
the best results. Health care experts and researchers are
constantly evaluating the evidence to make sure that
guidelines and measures are kept up-to-date. Sometimes,
guidelines and measures are revised to reflect new evidence.
Description of
footnotes
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
