The Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association (MHA) and the Organization of Nurse Leaders of MA, RI, NH, CT, VT (ONL) have publicly posted the latest available selected nursing-sensitive care measures, including those endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF), for 72 Massachusetts hospitals. Reported measures include pressure ulcer prevalence, patient falls, and patient falls with injury.

Updated reports can be viewed here. The reports can also be viewed by visiting www.patientcarelink.org and clicking on “Healthcare Provider Data” and then “Massachusetts Hospital Data” and then “Individual Hospital Performance Measures.” Individual hospitals’ reports can be selected from there.

The reports now incorporate the nursing-sensitive measure data reported for the period October 2017 – September 2018. In addition to individual hospitals’ results, the PatientCareLink site also includes statistical appendices, reporting history documents, narrative comments if any were provided, and peer group comparison rates based on hospital size. Statistical appendices and hospital’s reporting history documents are accessible through the links  immediately beneath each hospital’s bar charts, and additional comments can be found through the “Click here to read Hospital’s comments” link to the right of a given hospital name.

“Massachusetts hospitals publicly post important quality and staffing data on the PatientCareLink website to offer patients and caregivers alike direct access to this important information, to continually encourage improved care delivery, and to provide additional confidence in the care patients receive,” said Pat Noga, PhD, RN, FAAN, Vice President of Clinical Affairs for MHA. “Our hospitals are committed to providing the highest quality and safest care possible, and making this quality data easily available is just one way they are making good on that commitment.”

Massachusetts was the first state to voluntarily make hospital staffing and nursing-sensitive quality information public. The PatientCareLink website is an important resource and gives patients an open and transparent view of the hospitals providing them care. In addition to the nursing-sensitive measure data, the website also displays information from the Hospital Compare website, where the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services publish quality measure data from hospitals throughout the country. Unit-specific nurse staffing data is also available on the PatientCareLink site.

Hospitals welcome transparency about their performance when performance measures are grounded in good science and are designed to make fair comparisons across institutions. Publicly reported performance data can offer several benefits, including:

• Offering useful information for making decisions about where to obtain healthcare
• Helping healthcare professionals and institutions improve the care they deliver; and
• Providing extra motivation to improve performance. ###

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