Hospital ranking - Dangers of staying in a hospital

Many that are highly rated by government regulators only have marginally lower patient death rates. Researchers evaluated 3,657 hospitals nationwide that are listed on a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Web site. The Hospital Compare site shows how hospitals stack up on recommended treatments and is designed to help consumers comparison shop for health care. The study examined three conditions that often lead to hospitalization — heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia — and found that death rates for patients with those diseases were only slightly lower at top-rated hospitals in 2004 than at the lowest-rated hospitals.

Hospital health care and expense
Americans get the poorest hospital health care and yet pay the most compared to five other rich countries. Germany, Britain, Australia and Canada all provide better care for less money. The U.S. health care system ranks last compared with five other nations on measures of quality, access, efficiency, equity, and outcomes. Canada rates second worst out of the five overall. Germany scored highest, followed by Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

Acute care for myocardial infarction
Across the U.S., hospital care of patients with acute myocardial infarction (AMI) has improved markedly. Between 1995 and 2006, the risk-standardized 30-day mortality rate for Medicare patients admitted for AMI decreased significantly, as did between-hospital variations in mortality rates. August 19 2009 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Danger staying in a hospital
Although hospitals provide an invaluable medical and surgical service, there are risks to staying in a hospital, and if you are aware of them you can help monitor and minimize these risks.

Prescription medication errors
Hospital acquired infections, including MRSA infections and pneumonia
Post surgical complications, including bleeding
Deep vein thrombosis and thromboembolism
Errors in judgment, diagnosis, and treatment made by hospital techs, nurses, and doctors
Complications of anesthesia

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Disaster preparation
U.S. hospitals are better prepared for disasters than they were before the Sept. 11 attacks, but many medical facilities remain ill-equipped for catastrophic situations like large natural disasters or terrorist attacks. But a report from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Center for Biosecurity found that hospitals still lack the capacity to deal with big influxes of patients for large and ongoing disasters. "While we found... that a strong foundation has been built for hospitals to be able to respond to catastrophic situations -- such as large earthquakes, pandemic influenza, or the aftermath of nuclear or biological terrorism -- there is much to be done before hospitals are prepared to address the complicated challenges associated with those large-scale events that drain response resources over a prolonged period of time," they wrote. Many studies have shown that U.S. hospitals would be completely overwhelmed by a large disaster. They lack beds, rooms and staff to handle large numbers of patients and many report they have insufficient space for new patients on an average day.

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