EP257: Rating the Raters of Hospital Quality, With Karl Bilimoria, MD, From Northwestern Medicine

In this health care podcast, I talk with Karl Bilimoria, MD. Dr. Bilimoria is a surgical oncologist and a VP of quality over at Northwestern Medicine. Plus, he is also a John B. Murphy professor of surgery. The second I heard that Dr. Bilimoria and his colleagues had worked on an initiative to “rate the raters” of hospital and physician quality, I reached out to get him on the show. I had just had about four conversations with various people about the difficulties of judging quality. And I had also had a confounding personal experience visiting a patient at a hospital judged a top hospital by a well-known national rating scale. And this “top” hospital had some readily apparent issues, and I am no expert. That got me wondering about the validity of some of these quality raters.

Given the importance and the need for health care quality transparency, Dr. Bilimoria and his colleagues set out to fill this gap by undertaking a (as mentioned) Rating the Raters process to evaluate and compare probably the major publicly reported hospital quality rating systems in the United States. These include the CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid) Hospital Compare Overall Star Ratings, Healthgrades Top Hospitals, Leapfrog Safety Grade and Top Hospitals, and the U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals. 

Interestingly, that “top” hospital I was in was scored a top hospital by one of the lowest-rated raters.

You can learn more at the New England Journal of Medicine Web site, thesecondtrial.org, and the NEJM Catalyst Web site. 

Karl Bilimoria, MD, is a surgical oncologist and a health services, quality improvement, and health policy researcher at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. He is the vice president for quality for the Northwestern Medicine system. He is also the vice chair for quality in the Department of Surgery and the John B. Murphy professor of surgery. His clinical practice is focused on melanoma and sarcoma. Dr. Bilimoria is the director of the Surgical Outcomes and Quality Improvement Center of Northwestern University (SOQIC), a center of 50 faculty and staff focused on national, regional, and local quality improvement research and practical initiatives. He is also the director of the 56-hospital Illinois Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative (ISQIC).