Frequently Asked Questions
What is in the Quality Report?
Lancaster General Health publishes clinical data (such as complication rates or number of procedures performed). Most data are displayed as percentages in the "quality indicators" column.
Return to Top
What if I want to know more about the data?
To learn more about the data collected, please visit the Hospital Compare website, www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/.
Return to Top
How were these quality indicators selected?
National organizations have endorsed certain quality indicators and safe practices. All the indicators or safe practices have extensive research to support their use and are defined so that all hospitals can use the same method for calculating the statistics. In other words, this method allows hospitals to compare apples to apples. Reporting methods are "open," which means anyone can see how the results were obtained. Indicators and safe practices are not perfect, however. We do not agree that all the indicators are valid markers of quality issues. Still, we use the national definition and report our performance so that you can compare the data to other hospitals. This way, you are assured that we are not reporting only our strengths.
Return to Top
Does this quality report include data about individual physicians?
No. We are publishing hospital and physician group data only at the present time.
Return to Top
Why is Lancaster General Health publishing its quality data?
We like what open reporting does for you. As a nonprofit hospital and community resource, we believe that you should know how we are performing. We want patients and families to have better information about the quality of healthcare in Lancaster.
We also like what open reporting does for us. We have found that public reporting has helped us document our care more carefully, obtain more valid data and continually improve patient care.
Finally, we like what open reporting does for hospital care in general. We hope that our quality report will contribute to a better understanding of how to assess, report and improve hospital quality.
Return to Top
What does risk adjusted mean?
The risk of a complication or death varies by patient and by procedure. For example, an older surgical patient who has co-morbid illnesses such as kidney failure and diabetes is at greater risk of developing complications than is a young, healthy patient. Open heart surgery has a greater risk of a collapsed lung than knee surgery does. Risk adjustment mathematically takes into account differences in patient and procedure risk factors, so that comparisons are more meaningful. Risk adjustment allows for comparison of actual performance with predicted performance, based on the average U.S. hospital.
Return to Top
How often will the data on this report be updated?
This report will be updated quarterly or as new data becomes available.
Return to Top