Quality comparisons of Ohio hospitals

Dr. Alvin D. Jackson, director of the Ohio Department of Health, hopes to soon provide quality comparison measures on state hospitals in a user-friendly online format. (Source: "Public to get more Ohio hospital comparisons," Plain Dealer, Dec. 17, 2007.) Since 2001, Ohio hospitals have provide some data to the ODH, including information on organ transplants, births, open-heart surgeries, and length of patient stays. While this information is available to the public, it is not easy to access and doesn't allow for a complete quality comparison of hospitals. ODH's new reporting requirements will "piggyback on what hospitals already report, such as the reams of information to Medicare." Representatives of the Ohio Hospital Association say that "hospitals are already required to report a great deal of information" and don't want to shoulder another burden if it doesn't provide important information for the public.

The Plain Dealer article also highlighted several already existing quality comparisons of Ohio hospitals, including the Employers Health Coalition of Ohio's "A Consumer Guide to Ohio Hospital Quality." The article also says Jackson "ultimately wants to have a data center that people can use to look up, by ZIP code or census tract, information on childhood immunization compliance, obesity rates, lead levels and other data that would help policy makers decide where to put scarce tax dollars to improve public health."