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Catholic and Other
Church-Owned Health Systems Deliver Better Quality Care
(Ann Arbor, MI) – August 18, 2010 - A study released by Thomson Reuters
found that Catholic and other church-owned health systems demonstrated
significantly better, more efficient care than for-profit health systems.
Catholic health systems also were found to provide significantly higher quality
than secular not-for-profit health systems. For-profit systems had the lowest
performance among the four types of ownership.
A total of 255 U.S. health systems with two or more short-term, general,
non-federal hospitals were assessed. Researchers looked at eight metrics that
address clinical quality and efficiency: mortality, medical complications,
patient safety, average length of stay, 30-day mortality rate, 30-day
readmission rate, adherence to clinical standards of care (evidence-based core
measures published by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services), and
HCAHPS patient survey score (part of a national initiative sponsored by the U.S.
Department of Health and Human Services to measure the quality of care in
hospitals).
Researchers used American Hospital Association ownership classifications to
assign the health systems to one of four ownership categories -- Catholic, other
church-owned, investor-owned, or not-for-profit. They found that:
 Catholic and other
church-owned systems are significantly more likely to provide higher
quality performance and efficiencies to communities than investor-owned systems.
Investor-owned
systems demonstrate lower quality performance than all other groups.
"The findings of the study suggest a changing role for health system governance
and leadership," said Jean Chenoweth, senior vice president for performance
improvement and 100 Top Hospitals programs at Thomson Reuters. "Our data suggest
that the leadership of health systems owned by churches may be the most active
in aligning quality goals and monitoring achievement of mission across the
system."
The analysis used the Thomson Reuters 100 Top Hospitals: Health System
Benchmarks study released on June 21 as its basis. It relied on public data from
the 2007 and 2008 Medicare Provider Analysis and Review (MedPAR) data and the
CMS Hospital Compare data sets. |
