(Salt Lake City, UT) – The Utah
Department of Health (UDOH) today released the 2012 Utah Hospital Comparison
Tool (https://health.utah.gov/myhealthcare/monahrq/). The online tool
enables consumers and other decision makers to easily compare Utah's hospitals
in selected treatment areas based on cost, quality, and patient safety. Health
care professionals, policy makers, and legislators can use the tool to inform
discussions about ways to increase the quality and safety of health care while lowering
costs.
This
year, Utah added a new module, County Rates of Hospital Use, which provides
rates of conditions and procedures at the county level, including information
on the number of hospital stays and charges or costs for those stays. Maps of hospital
use are also available, showing hospitalization rates by county for selected conditions.
In
addition, there are seven new indicators included in the query tool this year.
Two of the indicators show that as a whole, Utah performs better than
the national average when it comes to limiting unnecessary cardiac imaging for
preoperative risk assessment CT scans and limiting inefficient simultaneous use
of brain CT and sinus CT scans.
Other new indicators show that in
reference to surgical patient safety, Utah performed better than the national average
on how often post-operative patients became unable to breathe on their own and
needed a ventilator, but has room to improve on how often patients developed a post-operative
blood clot that ended up in the lung or in a large vein.
The findings
also show Utah ahead of the rest of the nation in all childbirth measures, including
those for new mothers and newborns, and provide information about how often and
when C-sections and vaginal births are performed.
“Some
complications may be inevitable in caring for people who are seriously ill and
require
complex medical care, but methods are available to prevent most complications,”
said UDOH
Deputy Director Dr. Robert Rolfs. “Data like these are important in helping measure
our progress, and in helping doctors and health care systems identify areas for
improvement,”
Rolfs added.
Hospital
comparison information is released annually as required by the Utah Health Data
Authority Act with the goals of improving transparency, helping the public
choose hospitals for various services, and ultimately improving quality of health
care.
The
comparison tool is generated by MONAHRQ, a web development tool created by the
Federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The information available in the MONAHRQ
system is based on admission rates and pre-calculated AHRQ Quality Indicator
measures (QIs) derived from local hospital discharge data. The AHRQ QIs are a series of standardized
measures that highlight potential health care safety and quality concerns.
###
Media Contact:
Kimberly Partain McNamara, MS
Senior Business Analyst
Utah Dept. of Health
801-538-9179
