1.
What is this Quality Report Card?
It is an online tool that you can use to
learn how well our hospitals cared for patients with certain common medical
conditions and surgical procedures, and how our performance compared to
hospitals around the country and the state. We believe that providing you with
accurate information will help you become more involved in your health
care.
We tried to simplify, as best as we can,
the quality data on our Web pages to help you better understand the
information. Also, whenever possible, we included consumer-friendly health
information to help educate you about quality measures and why they are
important.
There may be some measures that ranked
significantly lower than the national average, and we are working hard to
improve those with a "best practice" approach in which we share expertise from
around the BayCare system. For these measures, we will provide you with an
"Improvement Plan" to let you know what we are doing to help ensure that our
scores improve in the future.
Our quality program also includes the
internationally-recognized Six Sigma methodology, which helps us improve our
clinical and operational performance by providing a formal process of quality
training and education, evaluation and reporting.
Please be aware that this is a
work-in-progress. We will be making improvements and additions to this online
Quality Report Card as the national data that we are using for our foundation
continues to grow. Use the information contained on these Web pages as a way to
educate yourself about health conditions and treatments. Most importantly, talk
to your health care provider about any questions you may have.
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2.
How did you decide if a hospital's score is significantly higher or
significantly lower than the U.S. average?
We used an objective mathematical formula
to determine whether the difference between our hospital score and the U.S.
average score was statistically significant. This formula takes into account the
total number of patients, or sample size, each hospital had for a particular
quality measure. If the U.S. average fell within the range (or confidence
interval) around the hospital�s score, then the difference was not statistically
significant. The width of the range varies based on the total number of patients
in the sample. The smaller the sample size, the wider the range. The larger the
sample size, the narrower the range.
-
Hospital scores
that were significantly higher than the U.S. average are highlighted in "Green."
- Scores that were equal to or higher than the Top 10% of U.S.
hospitals received a checkmark.
- Scores that were significantly lower than the U.S. average
are highlighted in "Red." For these measures, we provided an "Improvement
Plan" to let you know what we plan to do to help ensure that our scores
improve in the future.
- Scores that were about the same as the U.S. average are
highlighted in "Beige."
When planning our Quality Report Card, one of our main objectives was to
create a tool that was easy to understand and easy to use. We believe public
reporting will help us continue improving our tradition of high quality and
innovation. While there is no single way to measure health care quality, the
information in this online report is consistent with national reporting
standards and methods. The Quality Report Card should be used by community
members and patients to help them become more involved in their health care, in
addition to talking with their doctor.
If you have any questions or feedback, we
would appreciate hearing them. Please do not hesitate to send us an e-mail at
baycare.communications@baycare.org.
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3.
Why did you decide to publicly display your Quality data?
BayCare strives to have one of the best
quality programs in the region. We are proud of our efforts and eager to share
them. We believe that public reporting will help us strengthen our dedication to
continuous quality improvement.
Our patients are at the center of our
quality efforts. As such, we believe that providing accurate information about
our hospitals in a simple, easy-to-use format, consistent with national data,
will help our patients become more involved in their health care. The more you
know, the better prepared you will be to ask the right questions for you and
your family. We are proud to be the first in the Tampa Bay area to provide this
kind of detailed information on our Web site. We take public reporting seriously
and view it as an essential element of our commitment to the communities we
serve.
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4.
How did you select which measures to include?
For now, the quality
measures that we are using are the ones reported to the Centers for Medicare
& Medicaid Services (CMS) and The Joint Commission. The data shows how often our hospitals provided
recommended care known to get the best results for most patients with certain
common medical and surgical conditions. These indicators are already being
reported on the CMS Web site, but we've made an effort to improve access and
simplify the presentation for ease of use.
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5.
Will you include additional quality measures in the future?
Yes. This online report card is just a
beginning for us. We plan to add more information on the site as the national
data that we are using for our foundation continues to grow. We also have
included a survey on the site asking users what additional types of measurements
they would like to add down the road.
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6.
How often will you update the data on these Web pages?
We plan on updating the data on our online
Quality Report Card every quarter, or four times a year. We also plan on
including more recent data and additional metrics in the future. Both will be
consistent with widely-recognized quality definitions used for national
reporting.
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7.
What do the colors and symbols mean?
We chose to use
color-coded boxes and basic symbols to show our performance rankings. Our goal
was to create a quick and easy-to-understand online tool that is interactive and
user-friendly. Each table will have the key shown below, explaining the color
coding and symbols.
|
Key |
 |
Top Performance. At or
above the U.S. Top 10 percent average. |
|
|
Significantly higher than
the U.S. average. |
|
|
About the same as the U.S.
average. |
|
|
Significantly lower than
the U.S. average. Click on the cell to read our
Improvement Plan. |
| * |
Technical
Note. The sample size is too small (N<25) to apply significance testing. |
|
N/A |
No patients met the
criteria for inclusion in the measure
calculation. |
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8.
If a hospital has a "Red" designation, does that mean the hospital does not
provide quality care?
No. Statistics and data do not begin to
tell the entire story of how a hospital performs. There is no standardized
equation that will definitively tell you whether a hospital is good or bad. The
majority of the time, our performance will be on par or better than the national
average. However, there may be a handful of areas that we need to improve, and
we are focused on a "best practice" approach in which we share expertise from
around the BayCare system.
Please consult with your physician about any questions you
may have about this information and how it can be used to make
better decisions about your health.
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9.
One of the hospital scores has a yellow "Checkmark" icon indicating it was equal
to the U.S. Top 10% score, but is not highlighted in "Green" which would mean
the score was significantly higher than the U.S. average. How is that
possible?
The "Green" color highlight is used when,
based on an objective mathematical formula, the hospital score was determined to
be significantly higher than the U.S. Average. However, we only applied
the mathematical formula to scores that had a reasonable sample size (more than
25 patients or N>25), as identified by CMS. We also did not apply the
significance tests in instances when the hospital�s score was exactly the same
as the U.S. Top 10% score.
As a result, a score that has a yellow
"Checkmark" icon but no "Green" color highlight means that either the particular
score did not have a sufficient sample size to apply the statistical formula or
the score was the same as the score of the U.S. Top 10% of hospitals.
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10. If I have any questions about this online
Quality Report Card, who can I contact?
We encourage you to contact us if you have
any questions. Please send us an e-mail at
baycare.communications@baycare.org
.
You also can send a letter to:
BayCare Communications
16255 Bay Vista
Drive
Clearwater, FL 33760
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11. What is BayCare and where can I go
for more information on BayCare's hospitals?
BayCare is a family of
health care providers consisting of the leading
not-for-profit hospitals in the Tampa Bay region. With
17,000 team members, 11 ambulatory centers and a wide array of other health services, we
are the area's largest community-based health system.
Here is a list of our hospitals:
Mease Countryside Hospital
Mease Dunedin Hospital
Morton Plant
Hospital
Morton Plant North Bay Hospital
St. Anthony's Hospital
St.
Joseph's Hospital
St. Joseph's Children's Hospital of Tampa
St. Joseph's
Women's Hospital
South Florida Baptist
Hospital
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