Consumers Union launches health care tour, hospital ratings

YONKERS, N.Y. – Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports magazine, last week launched a national tour to listen to Americans talk about their experiences with the nation’s health care system and record their stories for use in promoting health care reform.
The nonprofit has already collected “thousands” of stories from people across the nation in preparation for the Cover America Tour, the group said in a news release, and the tour Web site, www.CoverAmericaTour.org, features videos of some of those stories. It will be updated regularly with more videos and a blog as the tour crew travels from coast to coast.
The itinerary is posted online, and the site allows users to submit their own stories and find out how they can support health care reforms.
“There’s plenty of evidence that our health care system is broken,” said campaign organizer Meg Bohne in a news release. “But it’s important to remember that there are real lives and families behind all the statistics and data that point to the need for reform. The Cover America Tour aims to put a face on the problems Americans are experiencing and to make sure their voices are heard as the debate over health care reform heats up.”
The tour is part of a broader effort by Consumers Union to expand its involvement in health care. The group has been building an extensive health care-focused Web site, ConsumerReportsHealth.org, that rates diet plans, offers alternatives to different prescription drugs, and offers advice on how to be a better health care consumer. Last week, a new feature was launched – a hospital rating service.
Based on the 2008 Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care, a study conducted by doctors and researchers at the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, located at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, the new service covers 2,857 hospitals nationwide, including 10 in Rhode Island.
The Dartmouth analysis used Medicare data on the treatment given to elderly patients in the last two years of their lives and rated the hospitals as “conservative” or “aggressive” – with “conservative” treated as the more desirable approach because it is less likely to expose patients to unnecessary, costly and potentially risky procedures. The intensity of care is measured by days spent in the hospital and number of physician visits; in addition, an average out-of-pocket cost for physician visits is provided.
Among the Rhode Island hospitals rated, The Westerly Hospital is the most “conservative,” in the 36th percentile for intensity of care, with an average of 20 days in the hospital, 60.4 physician visits and a $2,617 average cost. The most “aggressive” is St. Joseph Health Services (presumably its Fatima Hospital, as the location listed is North Providence), in the 80th percentile, with 29.5 hospital days, 73.4 physician visits and an average cost of $2,769.
The Web site explains the study methodology in detail and warns that the rating tool “gives you one way to compare hospitals, but it’s not designed as a quality indicator.” For quality ratings, the site steers consumers to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare Web site, at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.
The Consumer Reports hospital rating tool is available at www.consumerreports.org.