Methodologies for evaluating hospital quality in America / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

The paper gives an account of the four systems that are currently used for evaluating hospital quality in America, viz. America's Best Hospitals, Solucient 100 Top Hospitals, International Quality Indicator Project, and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The "America's Best Hospitals" methodology takes into account three factors, infrastructure, process and outcome. Hospitals are first ranked in specialties, then the index of hospital quality is calculated by means of weighted indexes, and after that the best hospitals are selected according to the specialty rankings and the number of the hospitals. The "Solucient 100 Top Hospitals" methodology selects 100 top hospitals among hospitals of the same size on the basis of hospital quality and safety indexes. The evaluation indexes include eight items, such as index of risk-adjusted mortality rates, index of complications, and disease severity-adjusted average length of hospital stay. The methodologies of "International Quality Indicator Project" and "the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations" are used in many countries to evaluate clinical efficiency and enjoy high reputation in monitoring and promoting medical quality.