It's the patient outcomes that count

Do hospitals that perform better on quality measures have the best patient outcomes? A study published in JAMA tried to determine just that...from the Washington Post article reporting on this study:

"Patients at hospitals that scored near the top on the quality-of-care measures did do better than those at hospitals near the bottom -- but not dramatically so.

For every 1,000 heart attack patients, there were about five fewer deaths at the better-performing hospitals than at the lower-performing ones, the study found. The figures were similar for patients with heart failure and pneumonia.

Rachel M. Werner, an assistant professor of medicine and the study's lead author, said the results point up the need for more meaningful quality measures."