Oregon hospitals launch online data Website

The Oregon Association of Hospitals and Health Systems announced Tuesday that it launched Oregon Hospital Guide, a new Website that displays hospital data on a user-friendly platform. and the first phase of a larger hospital transparency effort.

OrHospitalGuide.org is the new home of data that tracks the quality of care in Oregon’s hospitals — which patients can use to learn about their local community hospital.

“The site is designed to make complex information understandable and accessible to all Oregonians,” the announcement said.

The current quality of care information on OrHospitalGuide.org is gathered from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and will be updated quarterly.

Notably, in the category of Patient Experience, OrHospitalGuide.org will display a rating of “poor” to “superior” for hospitals across the state.

In the Website, the ratings align with the new CMS star ratings, from five stars (superior) to one star (poor); St. Charles Bend, for example, is labeled as “average” in patient experience, which covers items such as how quiet the hospital is at night to how well staff explained medications and pain was prevented.

The other data measurements provided range from heart attack readmittance to Emergency Department and surgical care, flu and pneumonia, and complications and infection prevention.

Based on a new star ratings system by CMS for quality measures on its Hospital Compare website, this is the first of many ratings coming in future months that will further simplify information for Oregonians.

“We strongly believe that patients should be able to access hospital data and understand what it means,” said Diane Waldo, associate vice president of quality and clinical programs for OAHHS.

“To that end, we have spent the last few months designing this site to focus on ease-of-use, understandability, and value to the visitor. We are pleased to unveil OrHospitalGuide.org because of the value it brings to Oregonians.”

Site features include:
— Presenting existing quality of care information in an accessible, understandable way using simple navigation
— Enabling users to compare hospitals ‘ on several quality of care measures
— Explaining the meaning and importance of the different quality of care measures in plain language
— Providing searchable geographic and contact information with links to all hospitals

The website will grow over time. Future plans for the site include posting patient utilization and hospital financial data, such as inpatient visits, emergency room visits, operating margins and gross patient revenue. This expanded data is expected to come online in the first quarter of 2016.

“This website shows Oregon hospitals ‘ continued commitment to transparency,” added Waldo. “We believe that making hospital data accessible and understandable helps patients and families with their health care decisions.”

To learn more, visit http://orhospitalguide.org/