Study finds lack of consistency in orthopedic surgery hospital rankings
Public rankings of orthopedic surgery hospitals show inconsistencies and may provide conflicting results for patients, providers and payers, according to a level I economic study.
The study, performed by researchers at Northwestern University, assessed agreement and disagreement between five hospital rankings systems: US News, Healthgrades, CareChex, Women’s Choice and Hospital Compare.
“These rating systems can have a profound effect on public perception of a hospital’s quality, especially when a hospital is identified as high- or low-performing,” the researchers wrote in the study.
The hospital ranking systems evaluated a total of 1,640 hospitals for their performance in orthopedic surgery. While 638 hospitals were identified as high-performing by at least one ranking system, no hospital was ranked as high-performing in all five ranking systems.
Similarly, while 452 hospitals were identified as low-performing by the three rankings systems that rank low-performing hospitals (US News, CareChex and Hospital Compare), no hospital was ranked as low-performing in all three ranking systems.
“As each rating system uses its own rating methods and stresses different measures of performance, hospitals which are designated as high- and low-performing considerably vary between rating systems,” the researchers wrote. “CareChex and Women’s Choice emphasize Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems data, for example, which has been shown to favor smaller and nonteaching hospitals. US News, contrarily, emphasized the availability of advanced services and clinical technologies as well as ‘reputation,’ which favors large, teaching hospitals and major academic centers,” they added.
“Increased transparency, standardization and public dissemination of methodology behind ratings should allow for improved use of these ratings,” the researchers concluded. “In the meantime, patients, payers and providers should exercise caution when using these ranking systems to assess orthopedic surgery quality and stick to traditional methods of ascertaining quality such as hospital accreditation and performance on reported process and outcome measures,” they wrote.
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