Hospitals, like everything else in life, have reputations. When New York patients are picking a hospital before a surgery, some patients may seek out the hospitals with the most name recognition, best reputation or for being associated with a top-notch medical school. Frankly, health-care consumers don’t have much other information to go on.
According to Consumer Reports (CR), sometimes the top hospitals aren’t necessarily the best when it comes to surgery. CR reviewed government data and analyzed patients post-surgery at 2,500 hospitals across the country. Interestingly enough, some of the overrun, inner-city hospitals did well in areas such as preventing post-surgery infection and providing quality care. In contrast, the big-name hospitals didn’t perform as well.
Hospitals associated with prestigious medical schools like Johns Hopkins and Harvard got only average scores, even poor ratings. A spokesman from Johns Hopkins applauded CR’s effort to inform patients of hospital performance but indicated that the ratings were flawed since they relied on administrative data. For example, infection was only calculated when reflected in billing information, and this data is only accurate a quarter of the time.
Part of the problem in measuring hospital performance is finding a reliable way to measure the data. CR didn’t even get a chance to list some of the most well-known hospitals simply because of the way they reported their information.
The findings were separated into five run-of-the-mill procedures, including hip/knee replacement, angioplasty, back surgery and carotid artery surgery. CR rated hospitals based on the percentage of patients who stayed in the hospital longer than the national average for the listed procedure or the percentage of patients who died during their stay.
But no matter how much shopping around a patient does, surgeon error is still a possibility. When a patient is injured because a hospital or surgeon fails to follow the accepted standard of care, the injured patient has the right file a medical malpractice claim. This could result in compensation to help the injured patient recover from any damages and pain and suffering that might have resulted.
A New York surgical error attorney can help answer questions about when and how to file such a claim and how to recover compensation for the injury. It is in the best interest of the patient to quickly make an informed decision about their situation, and being guided through the process will assist them with any and all filings and paperwork.
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Big-name hospital doesn’t correlate to safer surgery necessarily
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Jay W. Dankner
JAY W. DANKNER was born, raised and educated in Brooklyn, New York. After graduation from law school in 1973, he joined the firm of the legendary, Harry H, Lipsig, under whose tutelage he learned the intricacies of civil litigation and trials. He tried and won his first case against General Motors in a case involving a design defect within weeks after his admission. Thereafter, he focused his attention on the emerging and developing field of law known as products liability litigation.
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