By Keith Purtell
A Golden, Colo., company that has established a Web site ranking hospitals, includes Muskogee Regional Medical Center, which was given mixed results, depending on the category.
HealthGrades.com includes free and paid information. Data for this article is from the free side of the site. The site organizes its free data by treatment or disease.
Mary Martin, 59, said her decisions in choosing a hospital would be influenced by this type of rankings but also by her personal physician.
“If I’m going to Dr. Robison for example, and I really trust him, and he is affiliated with the local hospital, then I would probably go there,” she said.
However, Martin felt strongly that there may be generational differences in whose decision-making is influenced by a Web site.
“I have an older neighbor who doesn’t use the Internet, and she is more likely to go and talk to someone down the street to get their opinion,” she said.
Rankings include:
• In the back and neck surgery category (except spinal fusion): MRMC and Saint John Medical Center in Tulsa rated one star. Hillcrest Medical Center rated five stars; and Tulsa Spine and Specialty Hospital, Oklahoma Surgical Hospital, Southcrest Hospital and Saint Francis Hospital Inc. rated three stars.
• In the bowel obstruction category (survival): MRMrated three stars, along with Seminole Medical Center, McAlester Regional Health Center, Jane Phillips Medical Center and Eastern Oklahoma Medical Center.
• In the Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease category, MRMC rated three stars for survival and one star for recovery, along with Integris Grove General Hospital and Holdenville General Hospital. Seventeen eastern Oklahoma hospitals rated three stars for both survival and recovery.
• In gastrointestinal surgeries and procedures, MRMC rated three stars, as did the other nine hospitals listed in that category.
• In the heart attack category, MRMC rated three stars for survival, as did Integris Baptist Regional Health Center and Haskell County Hospital.
• In the hip fracture repair category, MRMC and Claremore Regional Hospital ranked a single star each. All other 13 eastern Oklahoma hospitals rated three stars.
• In the stroke category, MRMC rated three stars for both survival and recovery. Haskell County Hospital, Eastern Oklahoma Medical Center, Tahlequah City Hospital, Integris Grove General Hospital rated one star each.
These are samples; other procedures and diseases are included on the site. Of these sampled major categories, MRMC ranked a five three-star rankings and three one-star rankings.
MRMC Chief Executive Officer Steve Mahan said he did not know enough about the methods used by HealthGrades.com to comment on specific grades, but believes more information is good for the public.
“My general attitude about all of those is that it is excellent,” he said. “For too long, consumers have not had good comparative information on health care providers. While we are in the first stages of that, and it will get better, it is a good first step. I think it’s the beginning of even greater transparency in health care.”
Mahan said he’s not worried about grading or ranking of hospitals hurting MRMC.
“As this information becomes more prevalent, I think consumers will use it more, and yes, it could start affecting health care decisions,” he said. “And that’s exactly what the point of it is. It’s to protect the consumer and to reward those who are providing high quality health care.”
Mahan said hospitals located in higher socio-economic areas where people take better care of themselves are likely to score higher.
HealthGrades.com gets its information from independent public and private sources. For hospitals, the company utilizes information management and statistical techniques to process and risk-adjust a large volume of patient level data.
According to the company’s Web site, they risk-adjust the data in order to make valid and accurate comparisons between providers, taking into account that the demographic characteristics of patients and the severity of patients’ illnesses may vary at different locations. This levels the playing field, for example, between hospitals that treat sicker patients compared to those that treat healthier patients, information on the Web site states.
Hospital ratings also use data from the most current three-year data set available from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and individual states that make the data available.
Key to the stars
The star system used by HealthGrades.com:
• One star: Poor.
• Three stars: As expected.
• Five stars: Best.
