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May 29, 2008

Consumers Union Establishes Hospital-Ratings Service

Consumers Union, a nonprofit organization that publishes Consumer Reports magazine, is establishing a new hospital-ratings service, reports The Wall Street Journal.

The organization hopes that the credibility of its magazine’s name (which does not accept advertising) can carry it into the field of health care, where doctors and other providers have balked at some evaluation methods proposed by insurers.

The service will include around 3,000 facilities, and consumers will be able to see a graph showing how intensely each hospital treats patients, on a scale from zero for the most conservative to 100 for the most aggressive. Intensity of care is based on time spent in the hospital and the number of doctor visits. The index reflects the hospital’s handling of nine serious conditions, including cancer and heart failure. The new ratings service will also publish the average out-of-pocket cost for doctor visits during the last two years of a person’s life for the nine conditions.

Research from the Dartmouth Atlas Project — developed by researchers at Dartmouth College that used data from the federal Medicare program — has shown that more intense care does not always yield better results. And some experts question whether consumers will care about the intensity of care, if there is no corresponding information about whether such care leads to better patient results at a particular hospital.

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