Four hospitals in New York have earned top honors for both patient safety and price transparency, according to an inaugural list released Tuesday by patient safety watchdog organization Leapfrog Group and software company Turquoise Health.
Three of the honorees, NYU Langone Tisch Hospital and Kimmel Pavilion, NYU Langone–Brooklyn and NYU Langone–Long Island, are part of the NYU Langone health system. They, along with White Plains Hospital, received dual recognition, an honor earned by less than 20% of institutions nationwide.
To earn the distinction, each facility had to achieve both the Leapfrog Group’s highest grade for patient safety measures–an A–and the highest level of compliance with the federal Hospital Price Transparency Rule. Leapfrog assessed hospitals using up to 22 patient safety metrics from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services combined with a survey. California-based Turquoise Health graded hospitals on how well they comply with the national price transparency rule, which requires institutions to publicly post their prices for procedures so patients can compare costs.
Dr. Robert Grossman, the chief executive officer of NYU Langone Health, credits artificial intelligence and new technologies with NYU’s consistently high patient safety ratings and appearance on the list.
Each hospital’s physicians use an electronic dashboard to oversee all patients’ changing conditions and respond quickly, he told Crain’s. Doctors can see what is happening across the entire enterprise, pinpoint where a patient experiences a hospital-acquired event and send a team over, he said.
“It’s all contemporaneous, so it’s not like we’re waiting six months and then we see the results,” Grossman said. “[Patient safety] requires an enormous emphasis and a team effort.”
NYU hospitals also use artificial intelligence to understand correlations between events and outcomes and if they can be improved, Grossman said. AI can parse through patients’ medication data and catch orders that physicians might miss, Grossman added, so individuals don’t go home without medicine and increase their chances of readmission. He noted that as a result, system hospitals have received Leapfrog’s highest safety grades for multiple years in a row and report some of the lowest mortality and readmission rates in the country.
Leapfrog’s safety grades center on how well hospitals prevent “never events” such as patients developing infections during their stays or falling in the hospital. Dr. Rafael Torres, White Plains Hospital’s chief quality officer, said the Westchester hospital focuses on performing “always events” to minimize the chance of negative outcomes.
The hospital uses technology to remind staff of simple steps, such as washing their hands when they enter and leave a patient’s room, that help avoid infections, he said. White Plains also uses an extensive pre-surgical testing program to reduce high-risk patients’ chances of having an adverse reaction to a procedure. The steps have helped the hospital earn multiple A grades from Leapfrog, he said.
Robert Andrews, the chief executive of the Health Transformation Alliance, which represents more than 60 large employers who provide health care benefits and released the list along with Leapfrog and Turquoise Health, said the list shows how difficult it is to achieve high levels of both safety and transparency.
Flaws in the federal price reporting system are partially to blame for hospitals’ low rates of compliance, he said. According to the Patient Rights Advocate nonprofit organization, only a third of New York hospitals adhere to the federal rule. Complicated processes for collecting and loading price data exacerbate the issue, Andrews added.
“It’s not all the fault of the providers by any stretch of the imagination,” he said. “We are mindful that the fact that an institution’s data [is] missing doesn’t necessarily mean [they’re didn’t] try their best. There’s also been some confusion or ambiguity in the reporting.”
Furthermore, he said, hospitals’ patient safety performance is highly dependent on the populations they serve. New York has fewer hospitals on the list than states of a comparable size: In California, for example, dozens of hospitals earned dual recognition. However, Andrews emphasized that New York’s urban hospitals are more likely to treat complicated, sicker patients, making it harder to achieve high safety ratings.
Ultimately, the inaugural list is not meant to be “punitive,” but to serve as a guide for patients and employers looking for high-value care, Andrews said.
“Price is important. But I don’t know anybody who wants their wives to give birth at the cheapest hospital,” he said.
The alliance, the Washington D.C.-based Leapfrog Group and Turquoise Health plan to release another dual recognition list in 2025.
Jacqueline Neber , 2024-04-10 11:33:03
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