A review of the latest Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council’s hospital performance report shows Tyrone Hospital as not listed due to “non-compliance.”
The council was established as an independent state agency by the General Assembly and the governor in 1986. In a foreword in its latest report, the council said it promotes health care competition through the collection, analysis and public dissemination of uniform cost and quality-related information.
The information is designed to help improve the quality and restrain the cost of healthcare, according to the council. The annual reports issued by the council are a way to help fill what the council describes as a “vacuum of information” and to assist consumers and purchasers in making more informed health care decisions.
The council also said, “(the) report can also serve as an aid to providers in highlighting additional opportunities for quality improvement and cost containment.”
The report is broken down into three regions and is hospital specific; all Pennsylvania general and most specialty general acute care hospitals, regardless of bed size, are included.
The report includes information on 29 medical conditions which specify the clinical reasons for a patient’s hospitalization. The report covered a period from Oct. 1, 2002 to Sept. 30, 2003.
Pennsylvania hospitals are required by law to submit certain information to the council.
Tyrone was excluded from the Western Pennsylvania report along with Armstrong County Memorial, Jefferson Regional and Millcreek Community hospitals.
The council said it acts upon the advice of its Technical Advisory Group, a panel of physicians and other health care experts, to help it determine which hospitals to exclude from the report.
Hospitals missing certain data or patient severity scores in excess of or equal to 10 percent overall are considered to be non-compliant and are excluded from the report.
The hospital-specific information for non-compliant hospitals is not shown in the report; however the records are included in the overall analysis for the measures included in the report and according to the council are reflected in the statewide and regional totals.
Tyrone Hospital was contacted about the non-compliant designation and spokesperson Theresa Yanchetz responded.
“The data for the report was gathered over a period of a year, and during that time we had some turnover, and a portion of the data was not submitted,” said Yanchetz. “We have corrected the problem and should not have any problems submitting complete data in the future.”
