Quality Data
The quality measures we closely monitor are tied to three conditions: heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. These are “quality of care” measures, meaning they report how often certain best practices for patient care have been followed. Many of the practices being measured are hard for someone who isn’t a physician or nurse to understand. What’s important is that these are practices that are well accepted nationally as steps that should be taken in the care of the conditions. For example, some measures include whether a heart attack patient was given aspirin upon arrival at the hospital or if a blood test was performed on a patient with pneumonia, or if a patient received an assessment of his or her heart function for heart failure.
This data is currently collected and reported by the federal government, through Hospital Compare. Hospitals have voluntarily reported their data to be posted on this site, which in turn is updated every quarter. The site displays the data reported for the most recently available 12 months.
