{"id":2062,"date":"2018-05-21T08:25:16","date_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:25:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/?p=2062"},"modified":"2018-05-21T08:25:16","modified_gmt":"2018-05-21T12:25:16","slug":"health-care-in-new-york","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/health-care-in-new-york\/","title":{"rendered":"Health Care in New York"},"content":{"rendered":"

None of us wants to think about this, but getting good medical care isn\u2019t a sure thing.\u00a0 While the vast majority of providers meet minimum requirements or better, many Americans are injured or killed by the medical care they receive.<\/p>\n

Nearly two decades agohe National Academy of Sciences\u2019 Institute of Medicine issued a national report, \u201cTo Err Is Human\u201d, estimating that as many as 100,000 American hospital patients died in one year due to medical mistakes.\u00a0 Subsequent studies have established a range that is even higher, from a low of 250,000 to as many as 440,000 hospital patient deaths annually.<\/p>\n

No matter what the number, they are staggering.\u00a0 And experts now consider deaths due to medical mistakes as the third leading cause of death in America, behind heart disease and cancer.<\/p>\n

The Institute of Medicine\u2019s 1999 report called for sweeping changes to substantially reduce the number of medical errors. \u00a0Improving patient safety is where policy makers must place their focus.<\/p>\n

Positive medical care outcomes depend on carefully-coordinated care, communication, and policies designed to protect patients from harm. \u00a0Not all hospitals are alike. \u00a0Choosing the right hospital can be even more important than picking the right doctor.<\/p>\n

New York State offers some information in this area.\u00a0 The state Health Department has a program, hospital profiles (https:\/\/profiles.health.ny.gov\/hospital\/<\/a>), which provides some useful information on the frequency of medical procedures that are performed at each hospitals.\u00a0 It also offers doctor profiles (https:\/\/www.nydoctorprofile.com\/<\/a>), which allows patients access to background information on physicians.<\/p>\n

But these profiles are often incomplete and do not rank providers by the quality of care.<\/p>\n

In light of that vacuum of medical provider quality performance data, outside private groups have developed their own measures.\u00a0 US News & World Reports<\/u> magazine issues an annual \u201cBest Hospitals in the U.S.\u201d\u00a0 Healthgrades.com also issues quality information on doctors and hospitals.<\/p>\n

Perhaps the most comprehensive is the annual hospital ranking issued by The Leapfrog Group (http:\/\/www.leapfroggroup.org\/<\/a>). \u00a0Leapfrog was created over 15 years ago by large businesses that were frustrated by the lack of quality health data.\u00a0 The businesses usually negotiated coverage for their employees, yet lacked the data to comparison shop.<\/p>\n

Leapfrog\u2019s Hospital Survey is considered by many to be the \u201cgold standard\u201d for comparing hospitals on standards of safety, quality, and efficiency. \u00a0Leapfrog collects voluntarily-provided surveys from nearly 2,000 hospitals and cross checks it with other publicly-released data and medical experts to issue annual rankings.\u00a0 The annual ranking shows that hospitals across the country show a lot of variation when it comes to patient safety.<\/p>\n

Leapfrog then ranks the states based on the number of hospitals that have achieved an \u201cA\u201d ranking.\u00a0 This year, the state of Maine topped the list with nearly 70 percent of its hospitals earning an \u201cA.\u201d \u00a0Rounding out the top five this year were Hawaii, Oregon, Wisconsin and Idaho.<\/p>\n

New York State ranked poorly, as it usually does, this year ranking 48th<\/sup> in the nation, with only 6 percent of its hospitals getting an \u201cA\u201d ranking.<\/p>\n

That means that it’s critically important that patients choose a hospital with a good track record on keeping its patients safe from harm. \u00a0In addition to researching the sources mentioned earlier, here are some other ways patients can be vigilant right now:<\/p>\n

Ask questions<\/u>.\u00a0Gain as much insight as you can from your health-care provider. \u00a0Ask about the benefits, side effects and disadvantages of a recommended medication or procedure.<\/p>\n

Seek a second opinion<\/u>.\u00a0If the situation warrants or if uncertainties exist, get a second opinion from another doctor: \u00a0A good doctor will welcome confirmation of his\/her diagnosis and resist any efforts to discourage the patient from learning more.<\/p>\n

Bring along an advocate<\/u>.\u00a0Sometimes it’s hard to process all the information by yourself. \u00a0Bring a family member or a friend to your appointment \u2014 someone who can take notes and help you understand the information and ask questions.<\/p>\n

Hopefully, you won\u2019t need to use this information any time soon.\u00a0 In the meantime, we should all be pushing for better healthcare oversight, more transparency so that consumers have data to make medical care choices and ultimately better outcomes, a healthcare delivery system where medical errors are rare.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

None of us wants to think about this, but getting good medical care isn\u2019t a sure thing.\u00a0 While the vast majority of providers meet minimum requirements or better, many Americans are injured or killed by the medical care they receive. Nearly two decades agohe National Academy of Sciences\u2019 Institute of Medicine issued a national report, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2063,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions\/2063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nypirg.org\/capitolperspective\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}