Louisiana hospitals post price, quality background online; CMS, JCAHO measures used for initial postings

Louisiana hospitals post price, quality background online; CMS, JCAHO measures used for initial postings

Key Points

* Legislature calls for more transparency between hospitals, patients.

* Quality section list the consider, condition, indicators, number of patients, and hospital score.

* Hospital competence managers play key role in creating site, content.

The common public in Louisiana very soon can access price and quality information for adjectives the hospitals in the state at Louisiana Hospital Inform (www.lahealthinform.org), a pattern site launched by the Louisiana Hospital Association (LHA). Data for respectively hospital include the average Medicare charge range for adjectives inpatient and outpatient services; quality score for heart attack, pneumonia, and surgical infection prevention from the Hospital Quality Alliance; and clinical services offered.

"On the home page, there is a hunt function, which allows you either to force out by parish, or conduct an advanced search," explains Chris Vidrine, the LHA's director of policy and rural affairs. "Individual hospitals come up [on the page]. After that, you can click 'vista reports' and get a hospital profile. Then, you can choose from inpatient services, outpatient services, or competence measures."

The quality measures section list the gauge, condition, indicators, number of patients the hospital had, its win, the national average, the national 90th percentile, and state average.

Legislature exerts pressure

The impetus for the site certainly came from the state legislature, say Vidrine. "We were given lots of pressure at the legislature to be more transparent--and this is becoming a national issue," he recall. "We also wanted to create a network site where the consumer have access to quality and pricing information."

Doing one or the other--but not both--is not sufficient, he argues. "Having both of them together in one place would furnish consumers more relevant information that they can then use within making a decision on a hospital," he explains. "While we started out next to measures from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, we plan on expanding that."

The LHA put together a quality expert panel, comprised of hospital point managers, and a CFO expert panel to guide the nouns of the two main areas of the site. "We next contracted with American Hospital Directory (www.ahd.com, base Louisville, KY) to actually create the site," say Vidrine.

Future expansion possible

The state's hospitals were supportive of the notion, but they were emphatic give or take a few not wanting to be inundated with more required reports, he continues. "They said, 'If you can find the information you inevitability from data we are already reporting, we're lively to do this,'" says Vidrine. "This company have lots of good information; they draw from the CMS quality facts, and they handled the pricing as resourcefully through MedPar."

The pricing, he explains, is for the 25 most common procedures by DRG. "We enumerate the high, low, and average charges," he shares.

Vidrine say it is possible the site will be adding more category in the adjectives. "We don't know for sure yet," he concedes. "When we initially planned the site, we considered necessary to go through focus groups and so forth. Then, the hurricane [Katrina] hit. We have promised the legislature we would publish a site with price and element data, and contained by order to stay true to that promise, we did it as speedily as we could; we had in the region of three and one-half months."

From this point on, the LHA will appoint a more formal advisory group composed of one or two legislators, business and insurance executives, and hospital administrators. "We will count on them to work near the quality expert panel and the CFO group to guide the adjectives composition of the site," he says.

Vidrine reports that the net site is averaging 200 hits a day. "The question we've gotten from consumers have be mostly about quality--wanting to know roughly different infection rates, survival rates, and so forth," he observes. "It shows you the public is really interested in competence."

Vidrine is convinced the site ultimately will lead to enhanced quality of comfort. "When people start posting their measures on talent, they start competing with respectively other [for better scores]," he explains. "And when they start competing, quality go up."