Objective Evaluation of Reputation

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afmsboy

Klami Daya
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Does anyone know of any such studies that have evaluated US Hospitals/Clinical Ctrs.? Studies that include things such as Morbidity/Mortality by disease type & severity, length of hospital stay, accuracy of diagnoses (i.e. confirmation by post-mortem etc), cost of diagnostic tests/procedures, rates of nosocomial infections, bang for the buck etc?

I ask because there is so much talk about reputations and I am unaware of how these reputations are formed save for NIH/NSF research dollars, word of mouth, US N&WR (mainly another word of mouth). I know studies show better surgical outcomes at large volume ctrs and also of better post MI outcomes at nationally ranked cardiology ctrs, but I dont know of any that allows a ranking to be done.


:confused:

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AARP did a study, and if you look at the description of how they conducted the study, they supposedly did look at most of the things that you mention. These things were supposed to have been broken down and looked at, including morbidity and mortality, post-op, medical, and hospital stay, etc. How much of a break down per diagnosis, I don't know...however for those of us who have worked on a team in a hospital we all know that the diagnosis reported does not necessarily mean much. However, one lesson I have learned this year is that a hospital's reputation has no bearing on its residency traininng prowess. There are hospitals who make the top 50 in US News and other lists (Solucient Top 100, etc.) whose residency programs are not that strong. Conversely, there are programs who never make the list that have outstanding training. Always remember the difference between a hospital that is tops if you are a patient there, versus if you are a resident!
 
Would you say that ABIM pass rates and confidence intervals (at least for bigger programs), would be ONE objective parameter of how good a program and their graduates are? I noted that there is a correlation for the pass rates and the reputation of the top-tier programs, like UCLA, Stanford, Mayo, etc. The ultra-top tier ones have pass rates of 98 and above, with CI of 90-100, the next level programs have pass rates of 94 and above, with CI of 88-100, and so on...Just a theory.;)
 
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amfsboy,

The following site does list morbidity/mortality for selected procedures and diagnoses:

http://www.healthgrades.com/default.cfm.

Basic info is free but I think a full report needs to be purchased. I checked the area hospitals that I am familiar with and the info provided seemed to be accurate.

Rachael
 
be careful with how you interpret the pass rate for each residency program. look at the number of residents taking the test at each program. there's a difference between a program with 5 people vs. 40 people.
 
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