[January 24, 2006] Web site compares state hospital costs, quality Tweet (Santa Fe New Mexican, The (KRT) Via Thomson Dialog NewsEdge) Jan. 24--Lovelace Medical Center in Albuquerque, Eastern New Mexico Medical Center in Roswell and the Heart Hospital of New Mexico fared the best in a new Web site that compares hospitals. CheckPoint: New Mexico Hospitals Accountable for Quality is a public reporting program that launched two weeks ago. It evaluates 14 practices that medical experts agree hospitals should follow in treating heart attacks, congestive heart failure and pneumonia. The information will be updated every three months. In the future, consumers will be able to compare infection rates and the cost of procedures at New Mexico hospitals. Consumers can use CheckPoint to select a health plan when offered options by their employer or to select a hospital for treatment. The New Mexico Hospitals and Health Systems Association sponsors the Web site along with the New Mexico Health Policy Commission. All but one of New Mexico's 35 hospitals volunteered to participate. The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services validates the information by randomly pulling patient charts from hospital files and checking them. But some New Mexico hospitals offer more complete information than others. The reasons are: Not all measures are relevant for the patient population of every hospital; not all hospitals have 25 or more cases for each measure; and not all hospitals have the resources they need for data collection. Overall, New Mexico lagged behind the national average in all but two of the 14 quality measures. St. Vincent Regional Medical Center, which discharges 12,713 patients a year, scored better than the national average in six areas. Santa Fe's hospital did well with treating heart attacks. But its scores in treating heart failure and pneumonia were less favorable. According to CheckPoint, St. Vincent needs to improve in the following quality measures: Congestive-heart-failure patients with low heart function should be prescribed an ACE inhibitor medication when they are discharged from the hospital; Congestive-heart-failure patients should be given smoking-cessation counseling during their hospital stay; Congestive-heart-failure patients should be given written instructions about medications, diet, activity level, follow-up appointment, weight monitoring and what to do if symptoms worsen; Patients 65 years of age and older with pneumonia should be given the pneumonia vaccination; Pneumonia patients should be given smoking-cessation counseling; Pneumonia patients should be given their first dose of antibiotic within four hours of arrival. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]