DHAKA: The federal government this month quietly stopped publicly reporting when hospitals leave foreign objects in patients’ bodies or make a host of other life-threatening mistakes.
The change, which the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) denied last year that it was making, means people are out of luck if they want to search which hospitals cause high rates of problems such as air embolisms — air bubbles that can kill patients when they enter veins and hearts — or giving people the wrong blood type.
CMS removed data on eight of these avoidable ‘hospital acquired conditions’ (HACs) on its hospital comparison site last summer but kept it on a public spreadsheet that could be accessed by quality researchers, patient-safety advocates and consumers savvy enough to translate it.
As of this month, it’s gone. Now researchers have to calculate their own rates using claims data, reports US Today.
Before the change, the Hospital Compare website listed how often many HACs occurred at thousands of acute care hospitals in the US Acute care hospitals are those where patients stay up to 25 days for severe injuries or illnesses and/or while recovering from surgery.
Now, CMS is reporting the rate of occurrence for 13 conditions, including infections such as MRSA and sepsis after surgery, but dropping others.
CMS said some of the new data include different, more reliable measurements of the same condition, such as the use of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data on bloodstream infections.
CMS changed what it reports to make it ‘more comprehensive and most relevant to consumers’, spokesman Aaron Albright said in an e-mailed statement.
He said the new measures received ‘strong support’ from a partnership of the National Quality Forum, the public-private entity that reviews performance measures that might be used in federal or private reporting and payment programs, and CMS prefers to use NQF-endorsed measures because they ‘offer a rigorous and thorough review process’.
BDST: 2129 HRS, AUG 06, 2014
