Hospitals, Policy

New national hospice database takes messy federal data and makes it beautiful and useful

The Washington Post just published the latest installment in its “The Business of Dying” series. […]

The Washington Post just published the latest installment in its “The Business of Dying” series. The story about frustrating experiences with hospice care is interesting (and heartbreaking), but the really cool part is the searchable database of hospice providers.

Using Medicare data that the government has yet to publish in a form that consumers can easily use, The Washington Post has created a guide for hospice patients and their families that offers insights into the operations of almost every hospice in the United States. While not comprehensive, the guide includes measures that experts say can help gauge the quality of care. The vast majority of the information presented is from Medicare cost reports and service provider listings, which are submitted to the government by the hospices themselves. Nevertheless, information is sometimes inaccurate.

You can search by state or by the name of the hospice provider. You can narrow the state searches by county, which results in a map with markers on it for each company in that area. The individual listing are packed full of helpful information and beautifully designed.

There are 11 data points for each provider and you can hover over certain measurements to get the definition. For example, “live discharge rate” is how many people who enroll in hospice care actually die in hospice care. About 15 – 20 percent of people who enroll get better and leave hospice care alive. If an organization has a higher rate than that, it means terminally ill people may be leaving the service due to inadequate care. Here are two records from the database.

An individual provider’s performance measurements are compared to the state average within the individual record, so you have the two data points together in the same place. Seems intuitive, but it isn’t a common design element. You also can compare different providers, if you are trying to choose between two services.

The main page of the database has six graphs illustrating the current state of in hospice care:

  • Size
  • Years in business
  • Accreditation
  • Ownership
  • Crisis care
  • Spending per day on patient care

This is how quality metrics for healthcare should work. The data should be easily accessible and incredibly useful. Well done, Dan Keating and Shelly Tan of The Washington Post.

Veronica Combs

Veronica is an independent journalist and communications strategist. For more than 10 years, she has covered health and healthcare with a focus on innovation and patient engagement. Most recently she managed strategic partnerships and communications for AIR Louisville, a digital health project focused on asthma. The team recruited 7 employer partners, enrolled 1,100 participants and collected more than 250,000 data points about rescue inhaler use. Veronica has worked for startups for almost 20 years doing everything from launching blogs, newsletters and patient communities to recruiting speakers, moderating panel conversations and developing new products. You can reach her on Twitter @vmcombs.

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