Cathleen Allison/Nevada Appeal
Figures released by the national Hospital Compare program last week show that Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center generally performs at the same level as other hospitals in the region and around the nation on a wide variety of measurements.
The data, including a tool that allows comparisons between as many as three hospitals, is available at www
.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.
Cheri Glockner, a spokeswoman for CTRMC, says the hospital views the federal data as one of the most reliable sources of information for consumers.
"This site is very, very good," she says.
Carson Tahoe scored better than the state average on categories such as "Did nurses always communicate well with you?" and "Was your pain always controlled?"
The Hospital Compare campaign by the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also looked at death rates among heart failure patients admitted to hospitals nationwide from mid-2005 through the middle of 2008.
The death rate among heart failure patients at Carson Tahoe Regional Medical Center - 14.9 percent of the 414 patients died within 30 days - is above the national average of 11.1 percent.
That worried medical professionals at the medical center.
The Hospital Compare program showed that Carson Tahoe did a good job with other quality control measurements associated with heart failure patients.
All of them, for instance, had been given counseling about the need to quit smoking, and about 90 percent of them had been given the tests and medications that are recommended for heart failure cases.
So why were death rates slightly higher than national figures?
Led by its vice president of medical affairs, Dr. Tony Field, a cardiologist, the hospital's staff reviewed the files of all 414 heart failure patients who had been admitted in the past three years.
About 70 percent of the patients, the review discovered, had been told that their medical conditions were terminal.
That finding, in turn, got medical professionals talking about whether the hospital is the best place for terminally ill heart patients or if they'd be better served in a hospice or a facility that provides palliative care.
The discussion in the medical community continues, says Cathy Dinauer, the registered nurse who serves as vice president of patient care services at CTRMC.
Dinauer says the Hospital Compare numbers also establish targets toward which nurses and physicians at hospitals can aim.
"These measures are extremely important," she says. "It's an everyday process of improvement."
Field notes that the Hospital Compare data can't look at factors such as nurses' empathy or physicians' listening ability that don't lend themselves to counting but may be highly important to patients.
"It's focused on what can be measured," he says.
Medical professionals throughout northern Nevada pay close attention to the new Hospital Compare figures that were released Thursday.
Dr. Dan Ferguson, chief medical officer at Saint Mary's Regional Medical Center in Reno, says the measurements are so important that they're posted in the physicians' lunchroom and other high-profile spots throughout Saint Mary's.
He says Saint Mary's was pleased that its performance improved on several key measures, especially because change involves thousands of decisions made by hundreds of medical professionals.
Still, he says, "We're not satisfied with where we are. We're always seeking to improve."
Cathey Ree, director of clinical improvement at Northern Nevada Medical Center in Sparks, says her hospital's team doesn't get hung up on minor variations in the scores from one report to the next.
"Every hospital's scores are going to have minor fluctuations, so we focus on long-term trends," Ree says. "We are relentless in our pursuit of continuous performance improvement."
Gayle Hurd, best practices administrator for Renown Health in Reno, encourages health consumers to use the Hospital Compare data as a starting point for conversations with medical professionals who know hospitals well.
While the data isn't completely up-to-date, she says it provides a focal point by hospitals to improve their patient care.
"All of this is a work in progress," she says. "And this is important."