New Report Reveals "Best" Hospitals are Not Necessarily the Best for all Procedures

BELLEVUE, Wash., July 24, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MPIRICA Health today released "Reputation vs Reality: What Outcomes Data Reveals About America's "Best" Hospitals," a new report comparing "top rated" hospitals, based on reputation, with alternative nearby hospitals. Results were in line with what MPIRICA methodology creator, Dr. Michael Pine, a Harvard trained cardiologist and nationally recognized medical quality expert, found in 1999: reputation does not necessarily match reality and that prestigious brands do not consistently deliver excellent care for all surgeries they perform. Rather than using a general ranking system, MPIRICA measured how surgeons performed on specific surgical procedures based on more than two decades of research, demonstrating the importance of utilizing data rather than relying on reputation built through lists like U.S. News & World Report's Best Hospitals Honor Roll.

MPIRICA analyzed ten highly reputable hospitals for this report – Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Cleveland Clinic, Duke University Hospital, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Mayo Clinic Hospital Rochester, New York Presbyterian Hospital, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, NYU Langone Medical Center and UCSF Medical Center – on 24 common procedural categories. These hospitals consistently appear on "Best" lists for overall hospital performance or safety, but after drilling down into data on surgical outcomes, there were some areas in which they fell considerably short.

"Choosing the right hospital is a life or death decision for some patients. It's vital that patients have access to data that points them toward their local hospital with the best outcomes history in the procedure they plan to undergo," said Shakil Haroon, founder and CEO of MPIRICA Health. "A patient should never trust a surgeon with their life without first understanding how effective they have been at the procedure in the past."

While the top-rated hospitals ranked poorly across certain surgeries, MPIRICA identified excellent nearby hospitals with top outcomes for corresponding surgeries. Alternative hospitals recognized include Euclid Hospital, Hoag Orthopedic Institute, Riverview Medical Center, NYU Langone Medical Center, Holy Cross Hospital, Rex Hospital, Duke Regional Hospital, Evanston Hospital, Brigham and Women's Hospital and Abbott Northwestern Hospital. Only one of the original ten hospitals analyzed, UCSF Medical Center, has an impressively consistent rating in all surgical procedures reviewed.

Hospitals studied in the "Reputation vs Reality: What Outcomes Data Reveals About America's "Best" Hospitals" report were assigned MPIRICA Quality Scores based on analysis of millions of Medicare claims from across the country. Scores were adjusted for patient risk, on a scale from 100 to 800, similar to a credit score. MPIRICA aggregated surgeon scores for each hospital. The scores provide a clear objective rating of surgical outcomes, not just for the 10 hospitals analyzed in the report, but for 4,914 hospitals nationwide, across 864 procedures. 

"Each MPIRICA Quality Score is the product of multiple clinical outcomes, tracked from patient admittance through post-discharge, using a high-quality, widely recognized national database," said Pine. "Each component undergoes comprehensive risk adjustment to capture patient risk and severity and is weighted to reflect its importance. As a result, the score allows direct comparison of U.S. hospital and surgeon performance at the individual procedure level."

Patients and their loved ones often don't know what to look for when choosing a hospital or surgeon for specific procedures. Many believe they must travel to hospitals whose names are recognizable across the United States. According to MPIRICA, patients can find great care in their own backyard; they just need to know how to choose where to go.

By equipping patients with objective data to make better healthcare decisions, MPIRICA hopes to improve healthcare outcomes and the quality of care.

To learn more about MPIRICA and read their latest report, visit https://www.mpirica.com/blog/2017/07/hospital-reputation-reality-report/ 

About MPIRICA Health, Inc.
Based in Bellevue, Washington, MPIRICA is a digital health startup founded in 2014 to demystify healthcare quality transparency for consumers and payers with an intuitive measurement of surgeon and hospital performance. The MPIRICA Quality Score is based on past medical outcomes, across 864 surgical procedures. The 3-digit score ranges from 100-800, with 600 to 800 representing an excellent demonstration of quality healthcare for a given procedure. Scores less than 600 but more than 400 represent fair care, while anything below 400 indicates substandard historical performance. Find information about MPIRICA Health on Twitter, LinkedIn or at www.mpirica.com.

SOURCE MPIRICA Health, Inc.

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