Health System Launches ‘Uncensored’ Quality, Safety Reporting Platform
Texas Health Resources, one of the nation’s largest faith-based, nonprofit health systems, today posted online a new quality and safety report on all of its wholly-owned hospitals with detailed performance data for specific clinical services using hundreds of metrics.
Texas Health Resources, one of the nation's largest faith-based, nonprofit health systems, today posted online a new quality and safety report on all of its wholly-owned hospitals with detailed performance data for specific clinical services using hundreds of metrics.
The Arlington, Tex.-based health system, which includes 25 acute care and short-stay hospitals, claims it is the first health system in Texas and one of the first nationally to publish this kind of uncensored, third-party data based on national-consensus clinical indicators, which Texas Health Resources does not own or control. Data in the online report are from nationally accredited professional organizations such as the Society for Thoracic Surgeons to help analyze outcomes for cardiac procedures like heart bypass surgery, for example. The report displays clinical results such as complication rates and number of procedures performed at each of the health system's hospitals.
"There are many, many places where [Texas Health Resources] outperforms both the U.S. average and the Texas average. But, there's also places where THR performs not as well," said Chief Clinical Officer and Senior Executive Vice President Dan Varga, M.D. "We don't suppress that performance. We show that performance along with the really good performance."
According to Varga, it is a "warts and all" public report of "objective measurement of clinical performance" which is different from many of the public reports and websites where consumers most often find proprietary information about quality and patient safety. The goal, he said, is to create a report that is easy for consumers to understand and includes a glossary of terms and technical definitions. "There's a lot of alphabet soup in the world around healthcare reporting and we want to make sure that folks understand what they are looking at," Varga added.
The initial reports from April 30 through September will include 15 indicators made up of approximately 300 metrics but they will be non-interactive, static reports in pdf format. However, once the online platform is updated in October, the reports will become fully interactive.
The Quality and Safety Report to the Community: A Transparent Report Card from Texas Health Resources is posted here.
The Arlington, Tex.-based health system, which includes 25 acute care and short-stay hospitals, claims it is the first health system in Texas and one of the first nationally to publish this kind of uncensored, third-party data based on national-consensus clinical indicators, which Texas Health Resources does not own or control. Data in the online report are from nationally accredited professional organizations such as the Society for Thoracic Surgeons to help analyze outcomes for cardiac procedures like heart bypass surgery, for example. The report displays clinical results such as complication rates and number of procedures performed at each of the health system's hospitals.
"There are many, many places where [Texas Health Resources] outperforms both the U.S. average and the Texas average. But, there's also places where THR performs not as well," said Chief Clinical Officer and Senior Executive Vice President Dan Varga, M.D. "We don't suppress that performance. We show that performance along with the really good performance."
According to Varga, it is a "warts and all" public report of "objective measurement of clinical performance" which is different from many of the public reports and websites where consumers most often find proprietary information about quality and patient safety. The goal, he said, is to create a report that is easy for consumers to understand and includes a glossary of terms and technical definitions. "There's a lot of alphabet soup in the world around healthcare reporting and we want to make sure that folks understand what they are looking at," Varga added.
The initial reports from April 30 through September will include 15 indicators made up of approximately 300 metrics but they will be non-interactive, static reports in pdf format. However, once the online platform is updated in October, the reports will become fully interactive.
The Quality and Safety Report to the Community: A Transparent Report Card from Texas Health Resources is posted here.
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