Choosing a hospital? Ratings help provide info on quality as Glenbrook, Resurrection get 'A'; Lutheran gets 'C' from one rater, five stars from another

Dec. 10--For those seeking medical treatment after finally meeting this year's insurance deductible, or planning for a medical procedure in 2020, choosing a hospital can be a critical decision. To help consumers make informed choices about where to schedule a procedure, several organizations provide ratings of hospitals' quality.

Hospitals earn reputations in a community as neighbors share anecdotes, but those reputations don't always align with the data. They also may not reflect steps that a hospital has taken to improve, or to develop expertise in a particular medical specialty.

The hospital ratings systems, such as the nonprofit Leapfrog Group's Hospital Safety Grade, U.S. News and World Report and the federal Medicare.gov provide more information about hospital quality. Their results can vary because they use different criteria, but they provide a starting point for those seeking information.

"Consumers and patients should use all available tools and resources at their disposal, as well as talk to their physician, to help decide where to seek care/treatment," said Danny Chun, vice president of corporate communications and marketing at the Naperville-based Illinois Health and Hospital Association.

That includes ratings systems, he said, though he cautioned that star ratings may oversimplify the complexity of health care, and their conclusions may vary because raters collect and weight information in different ways.

Some of the raters and agencies that provide hospital safety data are as follows.

* Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center on Chicago's Northwest Side, NorthShore University Health System's Glenbrook, Skokie, Evanston and Highland Park Hospitals and Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood each received "A" grades this fall from the Leapfrog Group, which releases grades for United States hospitals twice a year. Advocate Lutheran General Hospital in Park Ridge received a C grade from Leapfrog.

* U.S. News and World Report's most recent ratings ranked NorthShore University HealthSystem's Evanston Hospital at number 3 in the Chicago area, while noting that the hospital system also includes Skokie, Glenbrook and Highland Park hospitals. U.S. News and World also ranked Loyola Medical Center number 5 in the Chicago area, and Advocate Lutheran General at number 7 in the Chicago area. Advocate Children's Hospital in Park Ridge was ranked first in the nation for pediatric specialty.

* The most recent federal Medicare rankings gave Advocate Lutheran General five out of five stars. The ratings, according to Medicare.gov, are based on how the hospital compares to other hospitals nationally across several categories, including effectiveness of care, safety of care, patient experience and readmission rate. Medicare bestowed four stars on NorthShore University HealthSystem (mentioning only Evanston Hospital) and three stars on Amita Health Resurrection Medical Center. Hospital leaders have criticized the methodology of those ratings, however, saying larger hospitals are penalized because they treat more medically complex cases. Also, they may treat lower-income patients, who might be readmitted if they lack enough resources at home to recover.

* IBM Watson also lists the top 100 hospitals in the nation. Only two Chicago-area hospitals made the list this year: Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center in Chicago and NorthShore University Health Systems in Evanston.

* The Illinois Department of Public Health lets consumers see detailed information on hospitals at http://www.healthcarereportcard.illinois.gov/.

* The Joint Commission, a nonprofit health care accreditation organization, rates various measures of hospital quality on QualityCheck.org. Lisa DiBlasi Moorehead, associate nurse executive at the Oakbrook Terrace-based organization, said "...Quality Check reports reveal a health care organization's performance summary according to the latest National Patient Safety Goals (NPSGs) -- safety guidelines for surgery, patient identification, medication practices and more. In addition, Quality Check provides information on a hospital's performance in specific care areas such as heart failure or pregnancy." However, some hospitals are accredited by agencies other than the Joint Commission. For example, DNV accredits Lutheran General.

The most recent national hospital ratings, released in November, were from Leapfrog Group, which grades hospitals on dozens of measures of safety, including hand hygiene, intensive care unit physician staffing, bedsores and falls.

In all, 46 Illinois hospitals earned A's from Leapfrog: 19 got B's; 39 earned C's; and four got D's. No facility earned an F. Illinois ranked 11th overall, up from 14th in the spring.

The grades given to hospitals look at a number of safety measures undertaken by hospitals to prevent infections, falls, bed sores, and problems from surgery. The grades, according to Leapfrog, are "derived from expert analysis of publicly available data using 28 evidence-based, national measures of hospital safety."

The analysis conducted by the Leapfrog Group also looks at communication practices between doctors and patients, whether the hospital has specially trained doctors called intensivists working its intensive care unit, and whether there are enough qualified nurses caring for patients.

In the case of Advocate Lutheran General, Leapfrog gave the hospital a "below average performance" rating in several areas, including C. diff infection risk, urinary tract infections, blood clot prevention, dangerous bed sores, patient falls and injuries, hospital staff responsiveness, and specially-trained intensivists working in the ICU. The analysis did not detail why these areas were given a "below average" rating.

In an emailed statement to Pioneer Press, Jaimie Oh, spokeswoman for Advocate Health Care, said Lutheran General's focus "remains on providing the safest care and achieving the best outcomes for our patients. While we firmly believe efforts to report and measure safety are important, we recognize that government and industry safety organizations use varying methodologies that don't always reflect the quality of care provided."

Chicago Tribune reporter Lisa Schencker contributed to this report.

jjohnson@chicagotribune.com

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