June 15, 2015 – Held Accountable

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Anchor lead: Why do hospitals provide safety and quality measures publicly? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Should hospitals provide quality and safety data to patients and families easily and transparently? Johns Hopkins Medicine says yes, with a website devoted to this purpose.  Matt Austin, a safety and quality expert at Johns Hopkins, says the purposes are multiple.

Austin: To hold ourselves accountable to the communities we serve as Johns Hopkins Medicine, second is for the convenience of our patients, the quality and safety data for Johns Hopkins Medicine are available elsewhere, by putting it in one place we’ve made it a little more convenient for our patients to understand.  Another reason why we think this is important is it allows us to put some narrative around our data so we can actually talk a little bit about what the data mean, why they’re important to patients and probably most importantly what Johns Hopkins Medicine is doing to continue to improve upon its performance.   :31

Austin says the website will be continuously modified to improve transparency and ease of use.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.