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Local Hospital Care Better Than Average ; Hospitals in the Area Perform Better Than Many in Treating Pneumonia; and Cardiac Conditions.

Posted on: Saturday, 30 July 2005, 00:00 CDT

Hospital care across the country varies drastically depending on where you live, with some hospitals failing to perform even the most basic procedures to aid recovery, according to a new study by Harvard researchers.

The study compared 40 major metropolitan markets and did not include Greensboro or the Triad. However, data identical to that used by the researchers is available for local hospitals.

The News & Record took a look at the data, and the picture, overall, is good.

Hospitals in the Piedmont Triad on the whole perform better than the state and national averages on key indicators - but depending on what ails you, some hospitals in the area perform better than others.

For pneumonia, Randolph Hospital in Asheboro and Lexington Memorial Hospital outpace others in the region, according to the data.

But for a heart attack, the top performers are High Point Regional Hospital; any of the three hospitals in the Moses H. Cone Memorial Health System, which are in Greensboro and Reidsville; Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem; and Forsyth Memorial Hospital, also in Winston-Salem.

All those hospitals perform better than the state and national average in healing the heart. Most of the hospitals in the region were below average on providing counseling on quitting smoking.

However, hospital officials say that result is more because advice that is given doesn't get written down, not that it isn't given.

"We've been working on the documentation piece of that," said Dr. Brian Fillipo, vice president and chief quality officer for the Moses Cone Health System. "I think you're going to see gradual improvement."

The data, averaged for the first two quarters of 2004, looks at hospitals' performance in three main areas of acute care: heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia care.

Hospitals report the information to the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Hospital Quality Alliance, which analyze several procedures within each performance category.

For example, the groups look at what percent of heart-attack patients at each hospital are given aspirin upon arrival. A perfect hospital would perform each procedure 100 percent of the time.

"There is a lot of scientific basis for the measures, and if you do them well, you really should get better outcomes for patients," said Dr. William Lorentz, medical director of the Quality Resource Center at the Baptist hospital in Winston-Salem.

But Lorentz and other medical professionals said the data is not without error. The reporting system is relatively new, and hospitals are still working out the kinks in collecting and reporting the data.

So, a perceived difference in patient care at two local hospitals could primarily be a reflection of different record-keeping capabilities at the hospitals, said Rebecca Redding, the evidence- based care coordinator for Randolph Hospital .

"We know it's not just a documentation issue, but the documentation issues can be substantial," Redding said.

Still, the data provides a good jumping-off point for patients and would-be patients to ask questions about their care, hospital officials said.

"I think it's fair game for consumers to look at that data and ask questions," said Dr. Greg Taylor, chief medical officer for High Point Regional Health Center.

The data is particularly useful when comparing one hospital to itself over time - and time has shown that across the board, hospitals are improving, health officials said.

"I'm a strong believer and proponent of public reporting ," Fillipo, with the Moses Cone system, said. "You tend to improve on what you measure."

Contact Elyse Ashburn at 373-7090 or eashburn@news-record.com

Source: Greensboro News Record

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