NY hospital group grades report cards

The Healthcare Association of New York State gave hospital graders a taste of their own medicine this week with the release of  "HANYS' Report on Report Cards," which used nine criteria to grade 10 government and private organization-issued report cards, according to Kaiser Health News.

The report comes after a slew of unhappy hospitals voiced complaints regarding the Leapfrog Group's patient safety report card's grading process and required criteria, FierceHealthcare previously reported.

"We had been hearing more and more from members their general frustration of all the different report cards," said Kathleen Ciccone, director of HANYS' Quality Institute, told Kaiser Health News. "It's so time consuming for them to be able to respond to the reports, to be able to see what's useful about them. They're really looking for some guidance on how to use the information."

Based on a three-star scoring system, HANYS ranked the 10 hospital graders on different criteria, including whether their scorecards used measures grounded in scientific evidence, whether the data was recent and whether hospitals had a chance to review findings before publication to identify errors in the data. Report cards that met all or almost all of the criteria earned three stars, while report cards that met few or none of the measuring sticks received half a star.The grades are as follows:

  • The Joint Commission Quality Check, Medicare's Hospital Compare and two New York State Department of Health rating systems all earned three stars;
  • Niagara Health Quality Coalition's New York State Hospital Card earned two stars; and
  • Consumer Reports' Hospital Safety Ratings, Healthgrades America's Best Hospitals, Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score and Truven Health Analytics Top 100 Hospitals all received one star.

U.S. News & World Report received the lowest of the scores, earning just half a star, Kaiser Health News reported.

"In general, government and accrediting organizations are more successful than other report card organizations in meeting HANYS' criteria for evaluating hospital performance," the group wrote in its report card.

To learn more:
- check out "HANYS' Report on Report Cards" (.pdf)
- read the Kaiser Health News article