Published: July 09, 2006 10:21 am      

Commission evaluates state hospitals

Internet-based guide also compares costs for common procedures

CUMBERLAND — Looking for information on what your local hospital charges for typical medical care services, the number of child birth deliveries it performs annually, or what its rate is for providing discharge instructions for heart failure patients? You may be just a mouse-click away.

The Maryland Health Care Commission has released an Internet-based Hospital Performance Evaluation Guide of the state’s 47 acute care hospitals, including Garrett Memorial Hospital and the Western Maryland Health System’s Memorial and Sacred Heart campuses.

Memorial scored well under treatment for heart failure patients in the study, which reported the hospital performed recommended heart failure tests and distributed recommended medications for its patients 100 percent of the time.

Memorial also reached 100 percent for providing counseling on tobacco cessation with pneumonia patients, with Sacred Heart providing advice 93 percent of the time.

The Sacred Heart campus, however, was the only local hospital listed to provide advice on cessation for heart attack and heart failure patients, at 96 and 100 percent of the time, respectively.

Garrett Memorial scored in the 90s or higher in four sections of pneumonia care, including 100 percent for oxygenation assessment and providing pneumococcal vaccinations. The health system’s Memorial and Sacred Heart campuses both scored in the 80s in the same category, around 20 percent more than the state average.

Both WMHS campuses performed above the state average for distributing an antibiotic within one hour of an incision for hip, knee and colon surgeries, with Memorial at 87 percent and Sacred Heart at 86 percent.

Garrett Memorial ranked nearly 20 percent higher than the state average for distributing antibiotics within four hours for a pneumonia patient, coming in at 94 percent, followed by Sacred Heart at 78 percent and Memorial at 74.

The report also provides information on costs for common medical procedures statewide, including pneumonia, chest pain, knee joint replacements, and kidney and urinary tract infections.

The average cost for a pneumonia patient at WMHS was $6,390, the guide reports, a little below the state average of $7,046 and Garrett Memorial’s $7,956 bill. A case of simple pneumonia can land you in a local hospital anywhere between 4.9 and 5.8 days, according to the report.

A kidney or urinary tract infection will foot a bill of around $8,417 at Garrett Memorial, but only $5,159 on a WMHS campus. The state average is $6,233.

Maternity care was a major theme throughout the guide, with 65,839 child birth deliveries performed in hospitals statewide in 2004. Garrett County Memorial performed 256 that year — 191 vaginal and 65 Cesarean. WMHS’ Memorial campus performed 971 child birth deliveries, of which 692 were vaginal and 279 were Cesarean.

A vaginal birth delivery will cost around $4,452 at the health system’s Memorial campus, and $6,236 for a Cesarean. The same delivery procedure at Garrett Memorial starts off lower at $3,794, then jumps to $7,879 for a Cesarean.

Rena Litten, director of performance and improvement for WMHS, said she had not read the guide in-depth as of Friday afternoon, but it is one of the sources the health system uses to evaluate performance. A spokeswoman with Garrett Memorial declined to comment until she spoke with the hospital’s CEO Monday.

Litten said staff will review the guide to develop some talking points for patients, but cautioned that results of the study, which date back as far as 2004, may now be outdated and no longer reflect the health system’s performance.

“One of the things that is somewhat a challenge is the turn-around time causes it to be somewhat old,” she said, noting the health system proactively works on improving quality measures with even more current data.

“Even though the data (in the guide) may look a certain way, it’s very possible efforts are being made to improve those results.”

For more information on the Hospital Performance Evaluation Guide, visit www.mhcc.maryland.gov.

Tai Shadrick can be reached at tshadrick@times-news.com.