Huntington Hospital’s Chief Medical Officer, Michael B. Grosso, MD, sat down recently with hospital CEO Kevin Lawlor and Quality Committee Chair Paul Moulinie, MD, to answer some frequently asked questions about measuring the quality of healthcare.

Q: Hospital “report cards” are popping up everywhere. Is it actually possible to measure the quality of healthcare?

Dr. Grosso:  Healthcare is very complex. Much of what physicians and nurses do is hard to capture in measurements. However, there are some tests and treatments that we can look at more closely to see if we are providing the right care at the right time, and where there might be opportunities for improvement.

Q: What are some examples of this healthcare quality measurement?

Dr. Grosso:  We know that patients arriving to the hospital with a possible heart attack should receive certain medications, like aspirin. We also know that patients with pneumonia should receive antibiotics promptly. We can then measure the rate at which we give key medications as well as door-to-drug time in minutes. This lets us know how we compare with other hospitals and indicates our levels of improvement. There is an adage that you “can’t improve what you can’t measure.” 

Q: Where can you find information comparing hospitals in our region?

Dr. Moulinie:  A growing number of websites are providing the public with information about healthcare quality. One of these, www.qualitycheck.org, is maintained by the Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). To find information about Huntington Hospital, or any other accredited institution, just enter an area code. Information on heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care is easily accessible.  Huntington Hospital’s accreditation status, adherence to Joint Commission patient safety goals and recognition as a Magnet Nursing hospital are also available on this site.

Q: Where else can patients go for reports like these?

Dr. Grosso:  A regional quality improvement organization, Island Peer Review Organization (IPRO), recently launched a site which makes it easy to compare facilities. Navigate to www.abouthealthquality.org and scroll over to Nassau or Suffolk County. Hospitals are compared on the same four measures: heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical care.

Q: How does HuntingtonHospital compare with other hospitals in the region?

Dr. Grosso:  Looking at a year’s worth of data on the IPRO site tells a very gratifying story for us at Huntington. No hospital in Suffolk County demonstrated results that were superior to Huntington’s, and we outperformed in ten of eleven categories. Our care of patients with pneumonia, a frequent issue on the medical service, and our surgical care measurements were significantly better than national benchmarks. 

Q: Recently, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System put its quality results and infection rates on its public website.  Will this be important for patients?

Mr. Lawlor:  First, this was absolutely the right thing to do. Here at Huntington Hospital, our leadership has strongly favored transparency regarding our patient care results. The public is very concerned about infections in hospitals, and they have the right to this information. As a member of North Shore-LIJ we work very closely on these issues. We compare our data, and we look for opportunities to ensure that the same evidence-based practices are implemented everywhere. There are always ways that we can become better. For example, we are pleased that Huntington’s rates for certain infections in the ICU (catheter-related blood stream infections) are the lowest in the region. But we must sustain this, and we are diligently working toward getting all of our infection rates as close to zero as we can. We have found that this is best done by getting physicians, nurses and hospital leaders together to rethink everything we do, and to follow through with any improvements so that every patient gets the benefit of the same “best practices.”