A review of six publicly available hospital comparison Web sites suggests that they display inconsistent results and use inappropriate or incomplete standards to measure quality, according to a report in the September issue of Archives of Surgery.
A total of 113 million Americans searched for health information on the Internet in 2006, according to background information in the article. Of those, 29 percent searched for information on specific hospitals and physicians. At the same time, pressure from insurance companies and the public for transparency and accountability in health care continues to increase. Data on hospital performance is frequently made available through Web sites aimed at patients, but few researchers have examined these sites and their content.
Michael J. Leonardi, M.D., and colleagues at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, performed a systematic Internet search in September 2006 to identify publicly available hospital quality comparison sites. Six sites were identified and rated on accessibility, transparency of the data and statistical calculations, appropriateness, consistency and timeliness.
Of the six sites identified, one was government-run (Hospital Compare from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), two were non-profit (Quality Check from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and the Leapfrog Group's Hospital Quality and Safety Survey Results), and three were private and proprietary.
“For accessibility and data transparency, the government and non-profit Web sites were best,” the authors write. “For appropriateness, the proprietary Web sites were best, comparing multiple surgical procedures using a combination of process, structure and outcome measures. However, none of these sites explicitly defined terms such as complications.” All data on the sites were at least one year old, and most were two or more years old.