Hospitals Gobbling Up Other Hospitals Does Nothing but Help them Make More Money
You know how hospitals promise things will be better and cheaper when they buy
Medicare quality-of-care data reveal that when a hospital is acquired by another hospital or hospital system, readmission and mortality rates are not affected but patient satisfaction deteriorates modestly.
I actually find this statistic funny:
Compared to a control group of 1,986 hospitals that did not change hands, acquired hospitals saw their “patient experience” satisfaction score decline from the equivalent of 50th percentile to 41st.
The researchers call that a “modest deterioration in performance.”
Get it? The people who have destroyed our lives, hospital administrators, with their bogus quality metrics are having these same metrics used against them. Isn’t it beautiful? Even better, the metric they used was patient satisfaction scores:
The satisfaction score was based on patient responses to questions about whether they would definitely recommend the hospital, whether the doctor or nurse communicated well, whether they received help when needed, and whether they would rate the hospital as a 9 or 10 on a 10-point scale.
The irony. The karma. I have not seen the responses from these hospitals but I can’t wait. Watch them bad mouth these metrics and show the hypocrites they truly are.
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