Extent to Which the February Sample Clauses

Extent to Which the February. March Hospital Discussions Can ±dentify Effects Of the four events that may stimulate quality improvement as a result of public reporting, only two such events have occurred for most hospitals in our sample. In the first case, we have a group of 31 hospitals that decided to participate in the Initiative, permitting us to assess whether their participation decision led to quality improvement. In addition, 19 of the hospitals had submitted at least some data for the February posting, indicating that they had the opportunity to review their data as it would publicly appear—a second possible trigger for quality improvement. Moreover, 15 of the 19 hospitals that reported data in February have a substantial opportunity to improve on at least one of the measures they reported if we consider that any hospital not at or above the 50th percentile on a measure has a substantial opportunity to improve. The hospitals are scattered across the states and include small, medium, and large hospitals and both system and independent hospitals (see Table II.1). Many of the hospitals with opportunities to improve have been focusing on documentation as a reason for some of their low scores. Therefore, they have not reached the third potential trigger, which is feedback of data that the hospital views as “clean.” In addition, probably because of the web site’s low profile to date and the site’s design for professionals rather than consumers, stakeholders outside the hospitals have had no occasion to use the web site. Therefore, the potential fourth trigger--external pressure--has not yet come into play for any hospital, but it could be argued (and some did) that it may be a factor in the future. The hospital discussions reported here are well suited to identifying the mechanisms through which quality improvement has been or is likely to take place (discussed above), except the potential direct effect from simply providing information to medical and other staff that the hospital is now publicly reporting on these measures (which would require more broadly surveying hospital staff). In sum, the February/March hospital discussions provide insights into the early effects of the Initiative, but the early effects discussed here will not tell the whole story, which is still unfolding.