McHenry County Blog

Almost twenty days ago, McHenry County Blog reported on Medicare penalties being levied by the Federal government on local hospitals.

While the article focused on hospitals serving local patients, a Chicago Tribune article Thursday reported on hospitals statewide.

Being early in the alphabet helps businesses in the phone book, but is not necessarily an advantage in a list of hospitals being penalized.

Those Illinois hospitals getting the biggest penalty for high readmission rates within a month for Medicare patients are show in the graphic above.  Click to enlarge.

Hospitals McHenry County patients use most are listed below

• Centegra Health System – Woodstock Hospital, Woodstock 1.00%
• Centegra Health System – McHenry Hospital, McHenry 1.00%
• Swedish American Hospital, Rockford 0.64%
• Sherman Hospital, Elgin 0.61%
• Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital, Barrington 0.48%
• Provena – Saint Joseph Hospital, Elgin, 0.27%
• Rockford Memorial Hospital, Rockford 0.26%
• Saint Anthony Medical Center, Rockford 0.04%

Bill Baar’s West Side blog led me to the story of how the Obama Administration is penalizing hospitals it judges to have too high readmission rates, for Medicare patients.

Centegra’s Woodstock Hospital

Fox News explains, “Starting in October, Medicare will reduce reimbursements to hospitals with high 30-day readmission rates — which refers to patients who return within a month — by as much as 1 percent. The maximum penalty increases to 2 percent the following year and 3 percent in 2014.”

The Fox News article quotes a doctor as saying, “The readmission measures are risk-adjusted measures.”

Hospitals McHenry County patients use most are listed below

• Centegra Health System – Woodstock Hospital, Woodstock 1.00%
• Centegra Health System – McHenry Hospital, McHenry 1.00%
• Swedish American Hospital, Rockford 0.64%
• Sherman Hospital, Elgin 0.61%
• Advocate Good Shepherd Hospital, Barrington 0.48%
• Provena – Saint Joseph Hospital, Elgin, 0.27%
• Rockford Memorial Hospital, Rockford 0.26%
• Saint Anthony Medical Center, Rockford 0.04%

One side of a new door hanger rolled out by the Mike Mahon campaign this week.

Is it a political issue to say with photos about a political opponent?

“He’s got two vacation homes.”

This is playing the class envy card.

Apparently McHenry County Democrats decided this is a normal part of playing politics.

What is missing from Mike Mahon’s piece is any factual evidence Sheriff Nygren is remaining away from the office.

Does Mahon have photo surveillance of Nygren’s comings and goings or is hard evidence lacking?

(I know one can’t see where the Sheriff parks his car at the courthouse anymore.)

Mahon’s political attack opens up Democrat State Rep. Jack Franks to similar observations or descriptions.

Franks is not exactly your arch-type of a “working Democrat.”

It’s fair to say that Franks is a wealthy, liberal lawyer-politician.

And, he doesn’t disclose his legal clients. There is no voluntary listing of his firm’s clients on his annual income disclosure statement.

At least one now- prominent Democratic Party legislator-attorney is known to have done so.  One had a chance of being able to figure out if any conflict of interest was going on in that part of that prominent legislator’s career.

We do know that Franks was a lawyer who represented Mercy Hospital in its attempt to gain approval for a new hospital in Crystal Lake. While he was state representative.

Mercy has a hospital in Harvard, which is in Franks’ 63rd District and, if approved, a hospital in Crystal Lake would have drawn patients from Centegra’s Woodstock Memorial Hospital and McHenry’s Northern Illinois Medical Center, both of which are located in Franks’ district.

Yesterday we looked at death rate comparisons for Medicare patients for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia at Barrington’s, McHenry’s and Woodstock’s hospitals.

Today, we look at readmission rates for those three problems.
For heart attacks the Barrington, McHenry and Woodstock hospitals have readmission rares “No different than U.S. National Rate, ” as you can see above and below:

Readmission rates for heart failure are at national averages for Good Shepherd and Memorial, but worst than the national average at Northern Illinois Medical Center. The graphic from Medicare is below:
The pneumonia results for subsequent hospital visits follow for the three institutions:

The Feds say pneumonia readmission rates for Good Shepherd are in line with national averages, but readmission rates for the two Centegra hospitals are “Worse than (the) U.S. National Rate.”

One of the data sets issued by Medicare cuts to the chase.

It’s about mortality.

Death rates to the rest of us.

When I was managing state employee benefits (my consolation prize after running against Roland Burris for State Comptroller in 1982), hospitals were complaining that comparing death rates wasn’t fair because some hospitals, especially the teaching hospitals, had sicker patients to begin with.

I guess that compison problem has apparently been overcome. Either that or Medicare doesn’t care.

Good Shepherd is rated as “Better than national rates,” while Woodstock and McHenry rank as “No different from U.S. National Rate” concerning death rates for heart attack patients.

The same difference shows up for heart failure as far as death rates go.

For pneumonia, however, McHenry’s, Woodstock’s and Barrington’s hospitals are near the national average.

The Federal government has released data showing the use of medical imaging for hospitals across the country.

The data base allows the comparison of three hospitals on one page, so I selected Barrington’s, McHenry’s and Woodstock’s.

Taking a look at the information provided below and you can get some idea of what the Feds think of the utilization rates for the bottom three.

Even after reading the explanation for the first one, no lay person would be able to figure out where the numbers should be.

The explanation talks about “high,” but gives no clue as what would be considered too high.

Why even publish the numbers if there is to be no way to interpret them.

The other three have explanations within the descriptions to the left.

Let’s look at them.

With regard to mammograms, the explanation above says,

“A number that is much lower than 8% may mean there’s not enough follow-up. A number much higher than 14% may mean there’s too much unnecessary follow-up.”

Good Shepherd’s at 9% is a bit above the national and state averages, but below the 14% mentioned as too high.

Woodstock’s is at 3.4% and McHenry’s at 5.2%.

While Centegra’s hospitals are on the low end of the follow-up mammogram array, they are on the high end of double abdomen scans.  Both are more than three times the national average.

Good Shepherd is 31%lower than the national average.

What does the explanation say?

“The range for this measure is 0 to 1. A number very close to 1 may mean that too many patients are being given a double scan when a single scan is all they need.”

Here’s an interesting web site that allows viewers to compare three hospitals. I took the three who serve most McHenry County patients, Advocate Good Shepherd, Centegra McHenry and Centegra Woodstock.

Look at what patients filling out questionnaires said about each:

The lowest scores of any questions had to do with whether patients rooms were quiet at night.

The three local hospitals not only fall well below national standards for keeping hospital rooms quiet at night, they even fall below Illinois standards.

Mid-forties was the best any of the three facilities could do.

Boy is that a “Needs improvement.” I’d add, “Now!”

Before I need to spend the night.

None of the hospitals could make it above 78% on clean “always.”

In the all important category of “Would you recommend this hospital to your friends?” Good Shepherd came out on top at 73%.  Woodstock scored 67%, McHenry 69%.

I don’t know if the difference is statistically significant.

More on the subject tomorrow.