The Veterans Affairs Department is "raising the bar" for its healthcare centers by providing online tools so veterans can compare how well the VA's 153 hospitals perform, with the ultimate goal of spurring further improvements at those facilities.
Acute care, patient safety and intensive care are the principal areas targeted by the tools, which veterans and their families can access through the Linking Information Knowledge and Systems (Links) dashboard at VA's Hospital Compare Web site (http://www.hospitalcompare.va.gov).
The dashboard shows the relative strengths in traffic light colors of hospitals in these three areas, as well as the areas that need improvement, at the national, regional and local hospital level, said Dr. Robert Petzel, VA's under secretary for health.
For example, VA measures the percentage of veterans who smoke and what steps have been taken to help them stop smoking, such as cessation classes, counseling and medications.
Another dashboard system called Aspire documents the quality and patient safety goals in specific measures, as well as VA's progress in performing them from local to national levels, he said in an announcement Nov. 23.
The goal for veterans with high blood pressure is to manage it with blood pressure readings less than 140/90, for example. The measure shows the current percentage of veterans accomplishing that objective.
VA measures some health data in the Links and Aspire systems that other health systems do not evaluate. VA often sets its standards and goals higher than the benchmarks in other systems, such as scoring hospitals as red, or underperforming, with more than a 30 percent difference from achieving the objective.
Similar to the Hospital Compare Web site of private sector facilities at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, VA's Web site also tracks the mortality rates and readmissions after 30 days from discharge and best treatments for congestive heart failure, heart attack and pneumonia.
