Very interesting report from Reuters:
Catholic and other church-owned systems are significantly more likely to provide higher quality performance and efficiency to the communities served than investor-owned systems, according to a Thomson Reuters analysis of the quality performance of 255 health systems in the United States.
Catholic health systems are also significantly more likely to provide higher quality performance to the communities served than secular not-for-profit health systems, it said. By contrast, investor-owned systems have significantly lower performance than all other groups.
I’d never seen any similar side-by-side comparisons, and this seems to me to be about the strongest argument I’ve seen for keeping Catholic hospitals going.
Oh thank GOD some good news!
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=rates+of+infection+in+hospitals&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=rates+of+infection+in+hospitals&gs_rfai=&pbx=1&fp=eb578cd308673b63
Are infection rates lower in Catholic hospitals?
Very interesting. It seems to rebuke the laissez-faire market approach to health care. If we assume that the not-for-profit category includes government-run hospitals (i.e. municipal/county-owned, VA, state university-owned, etc.) then it would also seem to rebuke the notion of government as effective provider.
I note this passage from the Research Brief referenced in the Reuters article:
“As the industry reacts to healthcare reform legislation, including pay-for-performance initiatives and new tax rules that could stress certain ownership types more than others and change the balance of ownership types, assessing relative alignment of system hospitals with corporate goals will become a critical tool for both system management and governance. Health system leaders will need to become more active in guiding performance from the system level to make the greatest gains in improvement.”
Does anyone know what the “new tax rules that could stress certain ownership types more than others and change balance of ownership types” refers to? Does the health care bill stack the deck in favor of Catholic hospitals? Against them (and if so, which models are favored)?
I wonder how Catholic hospitals fare under national health care? Will they need to face the choice of performing abortions (or having abortionists on-staff) or closing or selling the place?
Catholic Charities in MA had to close their doors after a MA judge legalized gay marriage. Will Catholic hospitals likewise need to step aside when national health care gets rolling?
Since there is literally no detailed information available on this study, it’s hard for me to evaluate its bona fides. However, the concept of quality as a function of type of ownership is highly problematic in the sense that the line between the “owner” and the ultimate measures of quality is quite indirect. The things that were studied, e.g., infection rates and readmission, are all amenable to interventions and controls and have no direct relationship to ownership. The better study would be to evaluate what hospitals that scored best are doing to achieve their high quality, and using that as goals, benchmarks, and possibly regulations, for the others that fall short. This has much more potential to actually drive improvement for all hospitals.
Did anyone think of the closibg of St. Vincents” in new York, the current prot4est about it, and the issues of service vs profitability in all this?
“However, the concept of quality as a function of type of ownership is highly problematic in the sense that the line between the "owner" and the ultimate measures of quality is quite indirect. The things that were studied, e.g., infection rates and readmission, are all amenable to interventions and controls and have no direct relationship to ownership. ”
Barbara, that does make sense. Don’t you think, though, that, if there were no connection/correlation between the hospital’s category (Catholic, other religious, not-for-profit, for-profit) and its interventions and controls, that the four bars in the bar chart in the reseaerch brief would be more or less equal? i.e. that whatever does have a significant impact on these measures would be more or less randomly distributed across the categories?
I don’t know – just asking the question. I agree with you that it’s not easy to account for the differences from one category to another. To my consumer eye, they’re all examples of Giant Healthcare Systems, and they all seem to have competent people, profesisonal processes, etc.
It’s not that there is no correlation, obviously, someone found some kind of correlation. It’s just that the thing that was measured (let’s say, rate of postoperative infection) is something that is amenable to correction irrespective of type of ownership. You don’t have to become part of a Catholic hospital system to lower your rate of infection.
I would hope that there is more to Catholic Hospital than worrying about the post infection rate (although that is certainly a major concern). I would hope that intangibles such as bed-side manners, good and caring information to make important decisions, pleasant atmosphere and staff members, food, and a reflection of Christian compassion would be in evidence.
You can’t put that into polls or on a chart—but this has an enormous effect upon the over-all healing of the sick and injured coming into the hospitals.
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