If you're a diabetic resident of York or Adams county, and you're looking for a health care provider, the Aligning Forces for Quality Web site gives you plenty of opportunities to comparison shop.
Christine Amy, project director for Aligning Forces for Quality in South Central Pennsylvania, said the information on display there isn't designed to save you money, so much as to potentially save your life.
The project has used the Web site to post the results of a voluntary survey that included 57 percent of the primary care physicians in York and Adams counties, Amy said. That data shows the extent to which the different practices tested for and controlled diabetes symptoms.
"This is the first report that I know of in Pennsylvania," Amy said.
A $1.6 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, awarded to York and Adams counties in February of 2007, made the project possible, Amy said.
In awarding the grant, the foundation called for health care systems, health care providers, insurers, employers and individual patients to all collaborate on projects designed to accomplish three goals:
--- Improving the quality of health care.
--- Engaging the public in health care issues.
--- Getting health care systems to measure the quality of their service and report it.
Amy, a diabetic herself who volunteered for the American Diabetes Association, said diabetes seemed like a good place to start. It's costly, and potentially deadly, if
not treated properly.
Hospitals in the area generally tracked the quality of their inpatient care, but no comparative data was available for primary care physicians.
The purpose isn't to condemn or penalize the practices that rank low on the survey, so much as to alert them to areas where they can improve, Amy said. The stakeholders in the project intend to compile similar data for other medical conditions such as heart disease.
Anne Vallotton, a manager at Snyder's of Hanover, said her company is one of the project stakeholders. Since the information on diabetes became available online, Snyder's has been encouraging employees to make use of it.
"The underlying theme of all of this is to make everyone a better consumer of medicine and health care," Vallotton said.
THE SURVEY
Standards included on the survey:
--- Control over blood sugar
--- Whether blood pressure was measured
--- Whether LDL cholesterol levels were checked
--- Whether body mass index was checked
To see the data, go to www.aligning4healthpa.org. To see more of the York Daily Record, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.ydr.com. Copyright (c) 2009, York Daily Record, Pa. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, York Daily Record, Pa.