BackgroundOver the last decades, the patient perspective on health care quality has been unconditionally integrated into quality management. For several years now, patient rating sites have been rapidly gaining attention. These offer a new approach toward hearing the patient’s perspective on the quality of health care.ObjectiveThe aim of our study was to explore whether and how patient reviews of hospitals, as reported on rating sites, have the potential to contribute to health care inspector’s daily supervision of hospital care.MethodsGiven the unexplored nature of the topic, an interview study among hospital inspectors was designed in the Netherlands. We performed 2 rounds of interviews with 10 senior inspectors, addressing their use and their judgment on the relevance of review data from a rating site.ResultsAll 10 Dutch senior hospital inspectors participated in this research. The inspectors initially showed some reluctance to use the major patient rating site in their daily supervision. This was mainly because of objections such as worries about how representative they are, subjectivity, and doubts about the relevance of patient reviews for supervision. However, confrontation with, and assessment of, negative reviews by the inspectors resulted in 23% of the reviews being deemed relevant for risk identification. Most inspectors were cautiously positive about the contribution of the reviews to their risk identification.ConclusionsPatient rating sites may be of value to the risk-based supervision of hospital care carried out by the Health Care Inspectorate. Health care inspectors do have several objections against the use of patient rating sites for daily supervision. However, when they are presented with texts of negative reviews from a hospital under their supervision, it appears that most inspectors consider it as an additional source of information to detect poor quality of care. Still, it should always be accompanied and verified by other quality and safety indicators. More research on the value and usability of patient rating sites in daily hospital supervision and other health settings is needed.

Background: To assess the development of and variation in lengths of stay in Dutch hospitals and to determine the potential reduction in hospital days if all Dutch hospitals would have an average length of stay equal to that of benchmark hospitals.

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BackgroundIn the Netherlands, hospitals with quality or safety issues are put under intensified supervision by the Dutch Health Care Inspectorate, which involves frequent announced and unannounced site visits and other measures. Patient rating sites are an upcoming phenomenon in health care. Patient reviews might be influenced by perceived quality including the media coverage of health care providers when the health care inspectorate imposes intensified supervision, but no data are available to show how these are related. ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to investigate whether and how being under intensified supervision of the health care inspectorate influences online patient ratings of hospitals.MethodsWe performed a longitudinal study using data from the patient rating site Zorgkaart Nederland, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2015. We compared data of 7 hospitals under intensified supervision with a control group of 28 hospitals. The dataset contained 43,856 ratings. We performed a multilevel logistic regression analysis to account for clustering of ratings within hospitals. Fixed effects in our analysis were hospital type, time, and the period of intensified supervision. Random effect was the hospital. The outcome variable was the dichotomized rating score.ResultsThe period of intensified supervision was associated with a low rating score for the hospitals compared with control group hospitals; both 1 year before intensified supervision (odds ratio, OR, 1.67, 95% CI 1.06-2.63) and 1 year after (OR 1.79, 95% CI 1.14-2.81) the differences are significant. For all periods, the odds on a low rating score for hospitals under intensified supervision are higher than for the control group hospitals, corrected for time. Time is also associated with low rating scores, with decreasing ORs over time since 2010.ConclusionsHospitals that are confronted with intensified supervision by the health care inspectorate have lower ratings on patient rating sites. The scores are independent of the period: before, during, or just after the intervention by the health care inspectorate. Health care inspectorates might learn from these results because they indicate that the inspectorate identifies the same hospitals as “at risk” as the patients rate as underperformers.

ObjectivesWe developed an outcome indicator based on the finding that complications often prolong the patient's hospital stay. A higher percentage of patients with an unexpectedly long length of stay (UL-LOS) compared to the national average may indicate shortcomings in patient safety. We explored the utility of the UL-LOS indicator.SettingWe used data of 61 Dutch hospitals. In total these hospitals had 1 400 000 clinical discharges in 2011.ParticipantsThe indicator is based on the percentage of patients with a prolonged length of stay of more than 50% of the expected length of stay and calculated among survivors.InterventionsNo interventions were made.Outcome measuresThe outcome measures were the variability of the indicator across hospitals, the stability over time, the correlation between the UL-LOS and standardised mortality and the influence on the indicator of hospitals that did have problems discharging their patients to other health services such as nursing homes.ResultsIn order to compare hospitals properly the expected length of stay was computed based on comparison with benchmark populations. The standardisation was based on patients’ age, primary diagnosis and main procedure. The UL-LOS indicator showed considerable variability between the Dutch hospitals: from 8.6% to 20.1% in 2011. The outcomes had relatively small CIs since they were based on large numbers of patients. The stability of the indicator over time was quite high. The indicator had a significant positive correlation with the standardised mortality (r=0.44 (p<0.001)), and no significant correlation with the percentage of patients that was discharged to other facilities than other hospitals and home (r=−0.15 (p>0.05)).ConclusionsThe UL-LOS indicator is a useful addition to other patient safety indicators by revealing variation between hospitals and areas of possible patient safety improvement.

ObjectivesTo investigate whether a priori selection of patient records using unexpectedly long length of stay (UL-LOS) leads to detection of more records with adverse events (AEs) compared to non-UL-LOS.DesignTo investigate the opportunities of the UL-LOS, we looked for AEs in all records of patients with colorectal cancer. Within this group, we compared the number of AEs found in records of patients with a UL-LOS with the number found in records of patients who did not have a UL-LOS.SettingOur study was done at a general hospital in The Netherlands. The hospital is medium sized with approximately 30 000 admissions on an annual basis. The hospital has two major locations in different cities where both primary and secondary care is provided.ParticipantsThe patient records of 191 patients with colorectal cancer were reviewed.Primary and secondary outcome measuresNumber of triggers and adverse events were the primary outcome measures.ResultsIn the records of patients with colorectal cancer who had a UL-LOS, 51% of the records contained one or more AEs compared with 9% in the reference group of non-UL-LOS patients. By reviewing only the UL-LOS group with at least one trigger, we found in 84% (43 out of 51) of these records at least one adverse event.ConclusionsA priori selection of patient records using the UL-LOS indicator appears to be a powerful selection method which could be an effective way for healthcare professionals to identify opportunities to improve patient safety in their day-to-day work.

ObjectivesReadmissions are used widespread as an indicator of the quality of care within hospitals. Including readmissions to other hospitals might have consequences for hospitals. The aim of our study is to determine the impact of taking into account readmissions to other hospitals on the readmission ratio.Design and settingWe performed a cross-sectional study and used administrative data from 77 Dutch hospitals (2 333 173 admissions) in 2015 and 2016 (97% of all hospitals). We performed logistic regression analyses to calculate 30-day readmission ratios for each hospital (the number of observed admissions divided by the number of expected readmissions based on the case mix of the hospital, multiplied by 100). We then compared two models: one with readmissions only to the same hospital, and another with readmissions to any hospital in the Netherlands. The models were calculated on the hospital level for all in-patients and, in more detail, on the level of medical specialties.Main outcome measuresPercentage of readmissions to another hospital, readmission ratios same hospital and any hospital and C-statistic of each model in order to determine the discriminative ability.ResultsThe overall percentage of readmissions was 10.3%, of which 91.1% were to the same hospital and 8.9% to another hospital. Patients who went to another hospital were younger, more often men and had fewer comorbidities. The readmission ratios for any hospital versus the same hospital were strongly correlated (r=0.91). There were differences between the medical specialties in percentage of readmissions to another hospital and C-statistic.ConclusionsThe overall impact of taking into account readmissions to other hospitals seems to be limited in the Netherlands. However, it does have consequences for some hospitals. It would be interesting to explore what causes this difference for some hospitals and if it is related to the quality of care.