Hospital Report Cards TM Maternity Care and Women's Health Methodology 2007-2008 7
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May not be reprinted or reproduced without permission from Health Grades, Inc.
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Transferred out less than 10 percent of stroke patients to another acute care hospital over three
years (20032005). This implies that the hospital is more likely to have onsite neurosurgical
services.
Assignment of Star Ratings for Women's Health
The maternity care percentile score was added to the cardiac/stroke percentile score to create a women's
health score for each hospital. Hospitals were sorted with star ratings assigned in three tier levels.
The following rating system was applied to the women's health score:
Best Top 15% of all hospitals within 19 states
Average Middle 70% of all hospitals within 19 states
Poor Bottom 15% of all hospitals within 19 states
Limitations of the Data Models for Maternity Care and Women's
Health
It must be understood that while these models may be valuable in identifying hospitals that perform better
than others, one should not use this information alone to determine the quality of care provided at each
hospital. The models are limited by the following factors:
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Cases may have been coded incorrectly or incompletely by the hospital.
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The models can only account for risk factors that are coded into the billing data--if a particular risk
factor was not coded into the billing data, such as a patient's socioeconomic status and health
behavior, then it was not accounted for with these models.
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Although Health Grades, Inc. has taken steps to carefully compile these data using its proprietary
methodology, no techniques are infallible, and therefore some information may be missing,
outdated, or incorrect.
Please note that a high ranking for a particular hospital is not a recommendation or endorsement by Health
Grades, Inc. of a particular hospital; it means that the data associated with a particular hospital has met the
foregoing qualifications. Only individual patients can decide whether a particular hospital is suited for their
unique needs.
Also note that if more than one hospital reported under a single provider ID, healthgrades analyzed patient
outcome data for those hospitals as a single unit. Throughout this document, therefore, "hospital" refers to
one hospital or a group of hospitals reporting under a single provider ID.
