The annual hospital rankings dished out by U.S. News and World Report may not be pulling the same weight they once did, as criticism over the last few years of the rankings have said they put too much weight on reputation and not enough weight on objective measures of quality.
Health IT firm Axial Exchange claims they’re missing another increasingly important measure of a hospital’s performance: patient engagement. Consumers are weighing in on review and ratings websites, and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services includes hospitals’s HCAHPS scores on its Hospital Compare website, so shouldn’t that data be part of how the public evaluates hospitals?
The North Carolina firm has released what it’s calling the Patient Engagement Index, a ranking of hospitals based on how they appear to be involving patients in care.
Axial Exchange says that patient satisfaction and engagement are becoming increasingly important measures for hospitals because a mounting body of research is connecting more actively involved patients with improved patient satisfaction, better outcomes and lower costs.
The first installment of the index ranked 74 Florida hospitals based on three measures: personal health resources, social engagement and patient satisfaction. Personal health resources was given the highest weight and took into account tools that hospitals make available to patients like websites, mobile apps or interactive tools to help them manage their health.
Social engagement, meanwhile, took into account a health system’s participation in social media and scores on consumer ratings sites. Lastly, patient satisfaction was factored in by including publicly available HCAHPS scores.
Axial Exchange started with Florida because “its demographics frame a bellwether for the rest of the nation,” and will release rankings for other ratings over the next several months. The searchable Florida rankings can be found here.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
Parrish Medical Center, based in Titusville, landed at the top of the Patient Engagement Index. Let’s start by noting that at least the mobile component of its HealthBridge portal was developed by Axial Exchange, so the company obviously has some interests there.
I did a quick check on a few other hospitals on the list, just to get a general sense of whether the rankings reflected the criteria, and at least on the surface they seem to. For example, North Shore Medical Center ranked 12th, with lower patient satisfaction and social engagement scores. The hospital has poor reviews on Yelp and lower percentile rankings on Hospital Compare website, but seems to be active on Facebook.
But even with the specific rankings aside, the idea factoring patient engagement into a ranking system is interesting. There are questions, of course, like whether this criteria is an accurate assessment of a hospital’s patient engagement. One issue that comes to mind is the observed lack of agreement and limited participation among some doctor and hospital review sites.
I think this index could be a useful tool for patients but am curious to hear your thoughts on what else should be included in a general assessment of a hospital’s patient engagement efforts.
[Photo from BigStock photos]
