Some U.S. hospitals consistently included on lists for top overall performance and patient safety do not provide the highest quality care for certain surgical procedures, according to an analysis by MPIRICA, a startup focused on quality transparency in the healthcare industry.
For the study, MPIRICA assigned 10 reputable hospitals a quality score on 24 common procedural categories. The quality score is based on examination of millions of Medicare claims from over 123,000 surgeons across the country. It measures patient risk and rates surgeon performance on a scale from 100 to 800, similar to a credit score.
MPIRICA averaged the surgeon scores at each hospital for each surgical category. Excellent outcomes are scores between 600 and 800, fair outcomes fall between 400 and 600 and anything below 400 is considered below average. The scoring does not penalize providers for taking on higher-risk surgeries.
Each of the 10 hospitals included in the analysis scored fair or below average for between 10 and 15 of the surgical procedures examined.
The following hospitals and health systems were included in the analysis: Boston-based Massachusetts General Hospital; Chicago-based Northwester Memorial Hospital; Cleveland Clinic; New York City-based NYU Langone Medical Center; Los Angeles-based Cedars-Sinai Medical Center; Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic; New York City-based NewYork-Presbyterian; Durham, N.C.-based Duke University Hospital; and San Francisco-based UCSF Medical Center.
Read the full report here.