One hospital is world-renowned and recognized for its expertise. It has over 3,000 physicians and 1,280 beds. About 145 miles down the road is a small, 25 bed hospital serving the needs of a county with an entire population of 32,000. One hospital has been a five-star hospital from the very beginning. One hospital has never been a five-star hospital. So which one is the five-star hospital?
Cleveland Clinic is the world-renowned hospital, but it has never been a five-star hospital. Hardin Memorial Hospital located in Kenton, OH is the five-star hospital. Hardin proudly serves its community and no-doubt has a fantastic reputation. So how do you compare a Cleveland Clinic to a Hardin Memorial? We used the Public Insight Consumer Assessment (HCAHPS) Interactive and the Quality Ratings Interactive to dive deeper into this perplexing question.
Consumer Assessments
Of the 57 measures used to rate hospitals, 11 are related to patient experience. We used an average of the trailing ten quarters of ratings.
-
Hardin Memorial has very high marks across the board, except the overall recommendation rating is strangely below a four.
-
Cleveland Clinic, on the other hand, has some issues. Quietness has an average over the trailing ten quarters of less than a three. Yet, when it comes to recommending the hospital to others, Cleveland Clinic is an unyielding five.
It’s complicated. As a consumer who has done some time in a hospital, it does not surprise me that Cleveland Clinic would be noisy. If it was deafiningly silent, I might worry about what is really going on there. This is the challenge of a busy hospital when it comes to appeasing us consumers. Do we really care if we are getting the best treatment we can?
Readmissions and Mortality
Of the 57 factors, 15 of them relate to readmissions and deaths. These follow a formula based on experience rates for specific procedures. Would it be totally surprising that Cleveland Clinic has a slightly higher overall hospital readmission rate than Hardin Memorial?
Timeliness of Care
Of the 57 measures, 7 related to timeliness of care. In this area, it is a big ouch for the Clinic which has double the emergency department wait times as Hardin as noted on the graph below.
