Health care administration paper

¶ … Anne Arundel Medical Center is one of the hospitals in Maryland that offers a report card of its services. In actuality, this medical facility offers a significant amount of more information for customers to decide whether or not they want to use it other than this report card. Additional information includes patient experiences, quality measures, as well as documentation regarding the quality of culture at this hospitable. However, the quantifiable nature of the report card, referred to as quality measure scores, makes this one of the more credible sources of information.

Of the 27 different categories available, Anne Arundel Medical center received 6 100 percents, three 99 percents, and four 98 percents. More revealing was the fact that the hospitals scores were largely contrasted with those of the median in the state. It is significant that in only six categories, Anne Arundel was lower than the corresponding median in the state of Maryland. It was even with the state median in three categories; in three categories there were no state medians while in one category (influenza vaccinations) there was no score for the hospital, presumably because the vaccination period scored extends to March.

However, due to the fact that there are a wide number of categories discussed, with a favorable showing for Anne Arundel compared to state medians in the vast majority of them, this report card certainly appears to be helpful to consumers. It appears that one could choose this hospital for a variety of conditions -- one of the few exceptions would be for pneumonia treatment, in which the state median was higher than Anne Arundel in two categories. It certainly would help for consumers to research the additional information related to specific medical needs, but for the most part this score card indicates this is a credible hospital for a consumer to attend.

There are a number of hospitals within Maryland that have a system of report cards available for individuals to review and determine whether or not they wish to patronize those establishments. However, not all of them are as thorough as the previously discussed one. An excellent example of this fact is provided by Atlantic General Hospital. To its credit, this institution has additional links on its website that can inform consumers about its practices related to quality and safety. There are, however, no patient testimonials, which are of dubious value anyway since these generally function as propaganda.

The specific name of the scoring card used for this organization is Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems. It has only 10 different categories in which it is evaluated. But none of these categories pertain to specific areas of treatment, which was one of the most useful aspects about the Anne Arundel scoring system. Instead, the 10 categories listed on Atlantic General's site pertain to general facets of service that are uniform to medical facilities. Topics include subjects such as proficiency of nurse communication, cleanliness of bathrooms, and the celerity of help received. Although these categories are important, they do not provide as much information in specific areas of treatment as other report cards do.