Minnesota Connect

Consumer Reports this week launched a new online “compare your hospital” tool. CR states:

“The data you’ll see here, from The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, shows that not every hospital practices conservative care. Many patients with these long-term serious illnesses are repeatedly hospitalized and seen by many different physicians. The Dartmouth research has shown that aggressive care does not necessarily improve patient outcomes and can sometimes shorten life. That’s because it exposes people to a greater risk of hospital-acquired infections and the medical errors that can occur when too many doctors test and treat patients in an uncoordinated way.

It’s important to understand that the distinction between aggressive and conservative care does not apply to medical emergencies such as a heart attack, stroke, broken hip, or inflamed appendix. All hospitals everywhere address these conditions immediately and with the full arsenal of treatments at their command.”

USA Today reported this week on a Commonwealth Fund analysis of variations in child health care across the US. Excerpt:

“The report found that top-performing states tend to have lower rates of uninsured children than those ranked at the bottom but also have higher health costs.
While other studies have considered how children fare, this is the first to compile an array of 13 measures relating to access to medical care, quality and cost for children in each state. Overall, Iowa ranked first and Oklahoma ranked last.”

On the USA Today website, read some of the reader comments following the piece if you want to get one taste of some readers’ views of children, of health care, of public policy.

Sean Kenney, PhD, of the Consumer Worker Coalition and the Labor Management Health Care Coalition, wrote to me:

While I had my own journal article published this week, my good friend and mentor Jack Fowler had an important paper, “Relationship Between Regional Per Capita Medicare Expenditures and Patient Perceptions of Quality of Care,” published in JAMA.

A blog on boston.com summarized the paper as follows:

More isn’t necessarily better when it comes to medical care, a survey of Medicare patients shows.

Spending on healthcare varies widely across the United States, from $12,000 a year for Miami beneficiaries to $5,700 for comparable care in Minneapolis, previous studies have shown. But research led by Floyd J. Fowler of the University of Massachusetts-Boston shows that money spent on medical care didn’t necessarily match perceptions of the quality of that care.

More than 2,000 Medicare patients around the country were asked by phone and mailed questionnaire whether their needs were met, what they thought about the quality of their care as outpatients, and how they would rate their overall medical care.

The following Publisher’s Note has been posted on HealthNewsReview.org:

We often benefit from some of the best health care journalism the world has ever seen. It’s investigative, in-depth, analytical, creative, gutsy, important and helpful. It raises questions about health policy and health care reform, about conflicts of interest in medical research, and about the way things are done in the massive health care industry.

But on stories about new treatments, tests, products and procedures, US news organizations day in and day out don’t do a very good job.

We are pleased that the journal PLoS Medicine has published our paper, “How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories.” It summarizes our first two years’ experience on HealthNewsReview.org.

The following Publisher’s Note has been posted on HealthNewsReview.org:

We often benefit from some of the best health care journalism the world has ever seen. It’s investigative, in-depth, analytical, creative, gutsy, important and helpful. It raises questions about health policy and health care reform, about conflicts of interest in medical research, and about the way things are done in the massive health care industry.

But on stories about new treatments, tests, products and procedures, US news organizations day in and day out don’t do a very good job.

We are pleased that the journal PLoS Medicine has published our paper, “How Do US Journalists Cover Treatments, Tests, Products and Procedures? An Evaluation of 500 Stories.” It summarizes our first two years’ experience on HealthNewsReview.org.