Volume 26 • No. 11
Stanford gets high marks in managed-care plan's quality report
Promotion criteria clarified for professoriate
School of Medicine faculty and staff physician rank structure
SHC readies for madate requiring outcomes data on coronary bypass
Santa Clara County hospitals adopt uniform emergency codes
Dr. O retires after four decades of dedication
One-day SEIU strike passes; negotiations still under way
Instructions:
Radiology Imaging Studies Available via Web
Stanford
gets high marks in managed-care
plan's quality report
Stanford Hospital & Clinics has received some of the highest ratings in the state on a Quality Index¨ profile recently produced and made public by PacifiCare of California. The index, based on risk-adjusted data from government agencies and other sources, rated the more than 200 California hospitals in PacifiCare's network on key indicators of quality, including patient safety measures, patient satisfaction, and the volume and survival rates for key surgical procedures.
Of the 48 indicators on which Stanford was measured, the hospital received a "best practice" designation on 16 of them - a number surpassed by just 12 of the 200-plus hospitals measured in the survey. A "best practice" designation means the hospital scored in the 80th percentile or higher in a given category, or that it met an annual patient-volume threshold for a specific surgical procedure. Highlights of SHC's results include:
A score
of 98 percent on "overall patient safety:" Only one other hospital in
the survey received a higher score in this category, which represents
an average of the patient survival rates for 13 medical procedures.
A score
of 95 percent on "overall quality:" Only seven other hospitals received
higher scores in this category, which represents an average score across
all categories of the index.
A 97
percent score on "overall utilization:" Only three hospitals in the survey
received higher scores on this measure, which represents the extent to
which the hospital's average length of stay for particular procedures
reflects the recommendations of professional societies, such as the American
College of Cardiology.
A 96
percent score on "heart attack survival" and "cardiac days in the hospital."
SHC
also received "best practice designations" on the following procedures,
based on meeting annual volume thresholds set by the Leapfrog Group, a
business coalition focused on healthcare quality: abdominal aortic aneurism
repair; carotid artery surgery; coronary angioplasty; coronary bypass;
and esophageal cancer surgery.
"Stanford is committed to providing the safest, highest-quality health care," said Brenda Fischer, director of quality improvement. "We are working diligently to improve our processes and systems to ensure that the information available to the public accurately reflects our high quality."
PacifiCare's index is based on publicly available, risk-adjusted data that the participating hospitals reported in 2000 to government agencies including California's Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development and the federal government's Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Since 1998, PacifiCare of California has compiled an annual report card on the medical groups in its network. But PacifiCare says its new index represents the first time a health plan has publicly released quality information on its network hospitals.
