A Physician’s Checklist for Choosing a Hospital

Many healthcare and consumer sites offer guidance to patients on how to select a hospital for an upcoming surgery. But how should a surgeon decide which is the best hospital at which to perform a surgery?

 

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality offers the following questions for consumers, which, when answered with a slight change of perspective, also provide a good checklist for physicians.

 

When reviewing a hospital’s Joint Commission accreditation, review the date of the survey, key areas examined by the survey, areas noted for improvement and any follow up activity results. Accreditation procedures can also drive improvements at hospitals. Holy Cross Hospital was recently recognized for the third time with Magnet® recognition as part of the American Nurses Credentialing Center’s Magnet Recognition Program®. The recognition has been shown to provide specific benefits to hospitals and their communities, such as: higher patient satisfaction with nurse communication, availability of help, and receipt of discharge information; lower risk of 30-day mortality and lower failure to rescue.

 

In addition to long-recognized ratings such as Healthgrades and U.S. News and World Report, the Leapfrog Group, an independent industry watchdog, now issues “The Hospital Safety Score.” Its rating is the first and only hospital safety rating to be analyzed in the peer-reviewed Journal of Patient Safety and more than 2,500 general U.S. hospitals were assigned scores last fall based on how well they protect patients from accidents, errors, injuries and infections.

 

As the model of healthcare delivery changes from “fee-for-service,” more patients will be covered under payer contracts with clinically integrated networks and accountable care organizations. For example, Holy Cross Physicians Partners, a clinically integrated group of physicians, worked with Florida Blue to create one of the first commercial accountable care programs in the state and we expect in the next five years that a significant portion of our hospital’s commercial business will transition to value-based contracts.

 

While national rankings on specialty care and industry accreditations can help answer this question, physicians should also ask if the facility offers the leading edge equipment, support staff and resources that offer the best setting for surgery. At Holy Cross, our dedicated surgical unit includes a stroke center certified by the Joint Commission and Agency for Health Care Administration offering state-of-the-art technology and skilled clinicians to minimize or essentially "undo" the consequences if patients experience an acute stroke in the OR. Our angiographic X-ray lab allows our team to capture and view detailed three-dimensional images of the brain vasculature. The hospital’s hybrid OR is available for highly complex interventions and procedures including transcatheter aortic valve replacement and is equipped with high-definition monitoring allowing for excellent anatomical visualization. In addition, our experienced physicians are hospitalists who can see patients for those physicians who are unable to or prefer not to round at the hospital.

 

Healthcare reform is also creating a drive to deliver high quality outcomes to patients in a cost-effective, efficient, reproducible and quantifiable manner. Last year, Holy Cross launched a transformational initiative called iCare (Integrated Care and Resource Efficiency) which tracks and records metrics for patients from the time they are admitted through discharge. In the operating room, it has resulted in significantly improved on-time starts and decreased unnecessary delays.

 

Patients take time to research hospitals because the day of their surgery will be one of the most important in their lives. Physicians can also benefit from due diligence to gain every advantage to provide quality outcomes for their patients.