Health Grades - Hospital Quality Guide Methodology 2006 Jan 04 (Page 13)

Hospital Quality Guide Methodology 2006 ­ 13

© Copyright 2006 Health Grades, Inc. All rights reserved.

May not be reprinted or reproduced without permission from Health Grades, Inc.

Data Model Limitations

While the models outlined in this document may be valuable in identifying hospitals that perform better than
others, one should not use this information by itself to determine the quality of care provided at each
hospital. The models are limited by the following factors:

·

Cases may have been coded incorrectly or incompletely by the hospital.

·

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 or health
behavior, then it was not accounted for with these models.

·

Although HealthGrades 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outdated, or incorrect.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 of a
particular hospital by Health Grades, Inc. It means that the data associated with that hospital has met the
foregoing qualifications. Only the individual patient can decide whether a particular hospital is suited for his
or her 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.