“Hospitals who do well with care, do not do well with civic engagement and equity,” said Brownlee, a former health care reporter for US News and World Report and Discover Magazine, and said she has been thinking about breaking down this type of data on hospitals for the better part of a decade. “If a hospital is good on inclusivity, then it means you are working harder to care for lower income people and people of color.”
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Houston’s Memorial Hermann Hospital System and Harris Health System are best in class for clinical outcomes and addressing racial and income disparities in health care, according to a report released Tuesday.
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“At a time when communities are relying on them like never before, hospitals must rethink what it means to be great,” said Dr. Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute. “COVID-19 highlights how hospitals are essential community partners for anyone in need. To be great, however, a hospital cannot only provide care that’s high in quality. It must also deliver value and advance equality. Our index is designed to help them do just that.”
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No previous hospital rankings use “civic leadership,” which includes community-minded policies such as charity care, financial aid, and paying all staffers a living wage, or “value of care,” meaning whether a hospital avoids 13 procedures of questionable or clearly absent clinical benefit. The Lown Institute, a nonprofit think tank in Brookline, Mass., incorporated both measures into its rankings of 3,282 hospitals because “it is time for hospitals to rethink what it means to be great,” said Lown’s president, physician Vikas Saini.
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The new Lown Institute Hospitals Index assesses civic leadership, value, and outcomes at US Hospitals.
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If we want to start holding hospitals more accountable for improving their performance, however, we first need a reliable set of metrics to hold them accountable to. Unfortunately, those metrics don’t exist—not in government or the private sector.
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A new STAT analysis shows the effort to study treatments has been marked by disorder and chaos, with huge financial resources wasted.
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The pandemic has left Black and Hispanic households much worse off than white families.
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Nations that effectively implemented simple public health measures have fared much better.
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"At a time when communities are relying on them like never before, hospitals must rethink what it means to be great," said Vikas Saini, M.D., president of the Lown Institute. "COVID-19 highlights how hospitals are essential community partners for anyone in need. To be great, however, a hospital cannot only provide care that's high in quality. It must also deliver value and advance equality."
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Despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, hospitals are closing. Hospitals should serve the public, not owners' pocketbooks.
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Based on private insurance vs. Medicare and Medicaid, “hospitals are put in the position where they are revenue-seeking organizations,” said Vikas Saini, president of the Lown Institute. “The way we’ve structured our health care system, there are more financial incentives and financial rewards … if you focus on elective procedures, people that are relatively healthier.” He said some large health systems discourage caring for Medicare and Medicaid patients.
The financial losses hospital-based systems suffered because of the COVID pandemic were “a shock to the system,” Saini said. “They need to rethink their business models. They need to partner with their communities in making the case that reimbursements ought to be changed. … COVID-19 shows that hospitals really are essential partners in every community.”
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They can provide a steady income even in 'down' times
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Even before the coronavirus crisis, the topic of burnout dominated discussions about the state of our health professions workforce, particularly as it pertains to physicians but not limited to them.
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Online registration, a drive through nasal swab and a short phone call. Then my insurance company was billed $1,844.
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July 1 is a big day in medical education. It’s traditionally the day newly minted doctors start their first year of residency. But this year is different. Getting from here to there — from medical school to residency training sites — has been complicated by the coronavirus.
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In New York City’s poor neighborhoods, some patients have languished in understaffed hospitals, with substandard equipment. It was a different story in Manhattan’s private medical centers.
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African Americans have a higher risk of hypertension compared with other racial or ethnic groups in the United States. One possible explanation for this disparity is discrimination.
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