By Healthcare Facilities Today

Oregon Health & Science University didn’t get high marks in a widely publicized hospital safety survey recently, but that’s because it chooses not to participate, not because of a poor safety record, OHSU’s chief medical officer said in a blog on the Portland Business Journal web site.

“You get punished if you don’t participate,” said Charles Kilo. “We believe in transparency and getting accurate performance data in the hands of consumers is good. The data should be accurate and there shouldn’t be a financial incentive for the organizations that put it out. If so, the public should be aware of it.”

In the article, Kilo said the problem goes beyond the Leapfrog Hospital Safety Score, which gave “A's” to seven Oregon hospitals and Ds to four others, with many scoring in between. It gave OHSU a C.

The score card looks at 28 quality measures, including “foreign object retained after surgery,” “air embolism” and “collapsed lung due to medical treatment.”

Kilo said because OHSU screens for a specific type of embolism, it detects it more frequently than other clinics, and paradoxically, this worsens their score, according to the blog.

Read the blog.