New Jersey DHSS publishes Hospital Performance Report

By: State: New Jersey

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (DHSS) recently released its 2008 Hospital Performance Report, which discloses important information about hospital quality in the Garden State.

The report includes performance measures for surgical care to prevent infections and blood clots, as well as heat attack, pneumonia, and heart failure. This report can help hospital consumers find valuable information on health care, such as hospital performance scores, tips for safer surgery, and questions to ask your doctor and hospital.

It also lists some important information to consider when selecting a hospital or doctor. Finally, by making the information public, the DHSS believes that it will foster healthy competition between hospitals to improve their quality of care.

While AARP believes that this information is very valuable to New Jersey health care consumers, the organization thinks that some important data is missing: hospital-specific medical error data.

Over 1,600 medical errors have occurred in the state of New Jersey since 2005. However, because the DHSS does not publicly release hospital-specific medical error data, New Jersey residents do not know where these medical errors occurred.

By making hospital specific medical error data public, AARP, like the DHSS, believes that it will foster healthy competition between hospitals and effectively reduce the number of preventable medical errors that occur in Garden State hospitals.

Tell Health Commissioner Heather Howard to make hospital-specific preventable medical error data available to the public.

Call the AARP Health Care Quality Hotline at 800-844-2272 and help make this important health care data available.

Other Resources

• Hospital Performance Report
• Comments, suggestions and questions for Health Commissioner Heather Howard.