Comparative study of hospital information disclosure between China and the United States / 中华医院管理杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To compare the contents of hospital information disclosure in China and the United States, and provide reference to improve hospital information disclosure in China. Methods Systematic collection was made for hospital information disclosure data from government documentation, statistical yearbooks, and hospital website portals like Hospital Compare of the United States and China. By means of inductive method and comparative analysis, hospital's medical services that were openly and freely accessible to the public of the two countries were studied in terms of structural indexes, medical quality indexes and patient experience assessment. Results The disclosed structure indexes of the US were abundant and distinctive. Its disclosed medical service quality indexes include such four diseases as myocardial infarction, cardiac failure, pneumonia and childhood asthma, as well as classification indexes under surgery infection prevention, comprising ten core process indexes and nine outcome indexes. In addition, the US also discloses patient experience survey results of ten aspects. Given the rich hospital information structure openly accessible in China, there lacks medical service quality information for disclosure. The only information directly comparable was the ranking of hospitals and specialties, instead of patient experience results. Conclusions China can learn from the experiences of American hospital information disclosure, establish an easy-to-understand and comparable index system; enrich the disclosure content, and build an authoritative and unified disclosure platform.