Ahh, to be #1.
Driving into Chicago from Indianapolis last week, the billboards stating hospital #1 rankings for patient satisfaction to heart care, increased exponentially the closer we got to the Chicago loop.
A side trip to any of the advertisers would find a campus with any number of banners hanging n the façade or poles restating the achievement and incorporating a picture of a happy and healthy child, adult, or family.
Elisabeth Rosenthal recently published an analysis of the U.S. News and World Report release of their annual “Best Hospitals” listing (The Hype Over Hospital Rankings (New York Times Sunday Review, 27 July 2013). Amidst her thoughts, she states,
“If you have a rare lung condition that has flummoxed local doctors, for example, you may want to fly to Mayo since U.S. News has ranked it No. 1 in pulmonary medicine. And if a dozen hospitals in your area offer hip replacements, a search of regional rankings on the magazine’s Web site will yield some useful statistics. But take all those hospital advertisements with a grain of salt.”
Healthcare organizations jump into a sea of marketing materials in the hope of establishing their unique brand. Establishing a provider’s differentiation from its competitor’s is a difficult task. There is significant value in convincing a 64-year old male to stay in their community for cardiovascular services and not driving fifteen minutes to another community.
Missing from all of the chest beating and exclamation of “We are #1” is how the data has been measured, what are the benchmarks or comparison for the ranking, or possibly what criteria are used to determine WHICH providers are reviewed for ranking,
When federally mandated patient satisfaction measurement was established, there was an outcry among providers that the standardized question set did not apply to their organization. My voice was raised in an outcry that HCAHPS measured activity around care delivery rather than the care itself. The bottom line is that HCAHPS offers a standard question set enabling an evaluation of care delivery.
Healthcare reform shifts the debate to cost containment, quality outcomes, and patient satisfaction. The dialogue leaves little room for billboards, national print ads, television advertising exclaiming “We are #1.”
Who will be #1 is cutting these extraneous costs and refocus expenditures of patient integration?
If careful, there may still be budget for one or two banners or perhaps a thank you gift for the staff.
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