Texas Health Resources advances transparency and accountability with public quality and safety report

ARLINGTON, Texas, April 30, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Texas Health Resources today threw open a window to give everyone — employers, physicians, patients and the public — a transparent, unbiased report of quality and safety performance at all of the health system's wholly-owned hospitals.

The "Quality and Safety Report to the Community: A Transparent Report Card from Texas Health Resources" is posted at www.TexasHealth.org/Quality-Reports.

"We are stepping out ahead of every other health system in North Texas and ahead of most other systems across the nation," said Doug Hawthorne, CEO of Texas Health Resources.  "We encourage other health systems to join us and embrace transparency in reporting quality and safety because it will raise the performance bar for all of us. It is the right thing to do for the people of the communities we are privileged to serve."

The system's Quality and Safety Report is based on a variety of indicators, mostly clinical data, and it includes the most currently available data.

Chief clinical officer and senior executive vice president Dan Varga, M.D., said, "Transparency drives performance improvement. Transparency means that we must continually challenge ourselves to improve because the people of our communities will see how we're doing.

"Three basic rules govern what the report covers," Varga continued.  "One – if Texas Health offers a medical procedure or treatment, we will try to find a third-party indicator that is appropriate to report. Two – all the indicators we use will be owned by some other organization, they will not be proprietary to Texas Health Resources. Three – we will include both the positive and negative metrics – we will not censor those we do not like. As a founding principle, we do not decide what to make public based on how it makes us look. We will give equal prominence to both favorable and non-favorable results."

The indicators used in the Quality and Safety Report have been developed by national specialty organizations based on the best current medical evidence, have gone through a rigorous consensus process, and have transparent and easily understandable indicator specifications.

"There are many hospital performance reports available but there are very few health care systems in the country that publish quality indicators using third-party measures," said chief operating officer and senior executive vice president Barclay Berdan. "Even fewer also publish both the positive and negative information.  In the same spirit as our Stewardship Report, Community Responsibility & Sustainability Report, and public financial reports, the Quality and Safety Report is an additional way of demonstrating our commitment to transparency and accountability for the resources and trust the community has invested with us."

Texas Health's commitment to transparency has included publishing its surgical complication rates in a major medical journal. That paper, which appeared last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association, is one of the first times a U.S. health system has publicly disclosed its complication rates in a peer-reviewed journal. The paper called for a reevaluation of the current transaction-based economics of the country's health care system. The research also highlighted Texas Health's 'safe surgery' program, which aims to reduce surgical complications and drive down health care costs.

Texas Health's new Quality and Safety Report, Varga said, is an even greater move toward complete transparency; the report will detail performance in specific clinical services using hundreds of metrics — not just overall complication rates.

The initial reports from April through September will be non-interactive, static reports. As capabilities of the reporting platform are refined, the reports will evolve to include an interactive component that will provide additional information. The initial reports will include 15 indicators made up of approximately 300 metrics. The report displays clinical results, such as complication rates or number of procedures performed at each wholly-owned hospital.  The web site provides brief explanations of what the indicators are and the metrics each is based on.

Hawthorne concluded, "Transparent reporting will not only drive improved performance, it embodies the essence of the mission of Texas Health Resources – to improve the health of the people in the communities we serve. Improving quality and safety will be our mantra everywhere – in the practices of Texas Health Physicians Group, in our wholly-owned hospitals, in our joint-venture hospitals, in our research endeavors, in our imaging centers – every place, every time we touch a patient."

About Texas Health Resources
Texas Health Resources is one of the largest faith-based, nonprofit health systems in the United States. The health system includes 25 acute care and short-stay hospitals that are owned, operated, joint-ventured or affiliated with Texas Health Resources. It includes the Texas Health Presbyterian, Texas Health Arlington Memorial, Texas Health Harris Methodist and Texas Health Huguley Hospitals, Texas Health Physicians Group, outpatient facilities, behavioral health and home health, preventive and fitness services, and an organization for medical research and education.

For more information about Texas Health Resources, call 1-877-THR-WELL, or visit www.texashealth.org.

SOURCE Texas Health Resources