Internet sites offer shortcuts to research
A wealth of information awaits Net surfers
The Web site of the Calgary Regional Health Authority in Alberta, Canada, is a health care benchmarker’s dream. Within its pages (www. crha-health.ab.ca), you will find charts on the hospital system’s demographics broken down by DRG and patient populations.
Want to know Calgary’s top 10 causes of mortality? They are there, along with other interesting data, such as most prescribed drugs, diseases with the longest hospital stays, and emergency department visits broken down by health groups. As raw data go, this is the mother lode.
Although the details of how the Calgary system measures outcomes and costs won’t be found at its Web site, Calgary is extraordinary for the degree of sharing it does by publishing its vital statistics on the World Wide Web. It may surprise Internet neophytes just what a wealth of free and small-fee information is available on line.
The editors of Healthcare Benchmarks have compiled a list of favorite Internet and Web sites health care professionals with limited budgets will probably find useful. The list includes Internet or Web addresses and a brief description of what can be found at each site.
Be aware that this is just a small sampling. This list, however, was compiled with an eye toward providing you with some jumping-off points. Some sites also have subscription services or membership fees that could prove cost-effective, depending on the scope of your benchmarking efforts. And most link to other valuable sites worth exploring.
And that’s the problem. There is so much information on the Net, you could spend every workday surfing. As it is unlikely that you have that kind of time to spend on line, set aside an hour of so each day or week to practice and explore. As you become more familiar with these sites, you’ll be able to check updates and new items more proficiently.
Meanwhile, if you have a favorite benchmarking or informational site you think belongs in this list, then send it to us by e-mail: Susan_Hasty@ medec.com; or snail mail Susan Hasty, Managing Editor, Healthcare Benchmarks, P. O. Box 740056, Atlanta, GA 30374.
Medical news and clinical abstracts
www.medscape.com
This is Medscape, the free portion of Medline (www.medline.com Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System), developed and maintained by the National Library of Medicine. At Medscape you can get health industry and clinical news and the largest selection of clinical abstracts on line.
www.reutershealth.com
This is an on-line service of Reuters News Service and, for the moment, the viewing is free. Reuters does a good job of gathering health care news from around the world and organizing it in a user-friendly way. If you want to stay current on the industry, new drug introductions, legislation, or scientific developments, Reuters is hard to beat. But as a news service, it is written for consumers. If you want the clinical data, you’ll have to go to the original sources, which Reuters is good about citing.
www.prnewswire.com
This is the Public Relations Newswire, and as the name implies, it is where corporate America files its press releases on line. If you’re researching managed care companies or new drugs, this free service could prove useful.
Hospital demographics and outcomes data
www.uhc.edu
University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) is a group of 70-plus university and teaching hospitals across the country that jointly pursue quality and benchmarking programs. UHC’s newsletter is on line and contains a summary of at least one of the group’s latest benchmarking efforts. These reports usually are data-heavy and contain contact information for pertinent personnel. You have to be a member to participate in the programs, but you can get a lot of ideas and possible benchmarking partners from this Web site. As is true with all of these sites, please read and respect the copyright data.
www.ncqa.com
As purveyor of the HEDIS standards and accreditation programs, the National Committee for Quality Assurance needs no introduction. But did you know that you can find 17 national HEDIS averages on line at this site? If you have HEDIS responsibilities, this is a good site to visit regularly.
www.njc.org
The National Jewish Medical and Research Center in Denver is a must if you are researching anything to do with diseases of the lung or immune system. You’ll find an on-line newsletter about the latest clinical trials and research, together with news about the only medical and research center in the United States devoted entirely to respiratory, allergic, and immune system diseases.
www.qiproject.org
The Maryland Hospital Association in Luthersville, MD, is a members-only site for a consortium that does a lot of quality improvement and benchmarking work in clinical areas developing national indicators. Some of the results are posted on line.
For example, you can find group data on hospital-acquired infections, inpatient mortality rates, and surgical-site infections. These data are not meant for public consumption (please respect copyrights), but they will give you an idea of the types of projects you can get involved in if you wish to become a member.
www.ohsu.edu
This is CliniWeb, an index of clinical information that lists nearly 10,000 sites by key terms. It is sponsored by the Oregon Health Sciences University and the National Library of Medicine.
www.nih.gov
The National Institutes of Health Web site is invaluable for ongoing news about clinical research as well as updates on clinical guidelines.
www.jcaho.org
Of course, you probably see more of the Joint Commission than you want to already; however, you probably have questions about its new outcomes reporting program, ORYX. Accessing the JCAHO Web site may be the quickest way to get answers to many questions. There’s good coverage in the site’s newsletter about ongoing programs and announcements.
Benchmarking and miscellaneous
www.apqc.org
The American Productivity and Quality Center (APQC) is a subscriber group of about 400 companies, but the Web site includes free articles on benchmarking, survey design, and training you can download. This also is the site of the International Benchmarking Clearinghouse, which provides information and support for the APQC’s benchmarking efforts.
www.ahcpr.gov
The Agency for Health Care Policy & Research (AHCPR) is a must location for benchmarking teams. The AHCPR publishes a great deal of research and abstracts on line. If you have e-mail, you can sign up for automatic updates on its Medical Expenditure Surveys.
www.quality.nist.gov
The National Institute for Standards and Technology houses the Malcolm Baldrige Award criteria, with short profiles of winners since 1988 and links to many other quality sites.
www.benchnet.com
The Benchmarking Exchange in Aptos, CA, bills itself as the largest and most comprehensive benchmarking and process improvement network in the world, with thousands of members in 41 countries. Fifty percent of Baldrige winners and half of Fortune 500 companies are members.
www.chim.org
This is the Web site for the Center for Healthcare Information Management in Ann Arbor, MI. You can order surveys and reports on information technology, industry informa-tion manager salaries, and trends. Here are two: Integrating Clinical Information Across the Continuum of Care and Nurse’s Executive Guide to Directing and Managing Nurse Information Systems.
http://neuro-www.mgh.harvard.edu
The address may look a little funny, but this is the location for HospitalWeb, a state-by-state listing of all hospitals that are on line. The site is maintained by the Department of Neurology at Massachusetts General Hospital.
www.amso.com
This is the Web site of the American Medical Specialty Organization, a managed care company in Los Angeles. It offers good on-line discussion groups on cost cutting, ethics, and health care reform. Also, after a hard day on the Web, your last stop might be to AMSO for the best collection of managed care jokes on the Web.
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