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Quality down at hospitals that focus on care for poor

Patient Safety Monitor Alert, May 21, 2008

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The quality of care provided for patients at hospitals that typically care for the poor, sometimes called safety-net hospitals, is lacking, reports The Washington Post. These hospitals are funded through state and federal programs and often enter into a low-quality cycle. The worse quality these facilities offer to patients, the less money they receive from federal programs that are structured on a pay-for-performance plan. The data supporting this finding was published in the May 14 Journal of the American Medical Association. The data was taken from 3,665 hospitals—safety-net and nonsafety-net—from 2004 to 2006.

According to the report, those hospitals with a higher percentage of Medicare patients were less likely to be included in a list of top-performing hospitals by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services; those hospitals that treated lower numbers of Medicare patients were more likely to be included in the top performer ranks.

To read the story, click here.

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