Abstract
Promoting healthcare in the setting of a megalopolis is a challenging task, even with the medical advances that the recent researches have provided. Even though healthcare facilities do everything possible to help patients recover, with the economical and financial issues that a standard state hospital has to face, offering its patients a full range of high quality services becomes hardly possible. By comparing two hospitals in 10451 Bronx, NY, one can define the issues that modern hospitals face most often, therefore, creating a list of top priorities for the U. S. hospitals of today to handle. With the help of the tool known as Medicare gov. Hospital Compare, two hospitals, St. Barnabas Hospital and Lincoln Hospital, were compared. According to the results, though both hospitals could use some improvement in terms of work management, St. Barnabas Hospital seems to be superior due to more favorable reviews received from the patients.
Introduction
Searching for a healthcare institution that provides the best services in the vicinity takes much time, with the tedious process of brushing through a number of reviews, hospital descriptions, etc. (Cronquist & Spector, 2011). However, with the help of an online comparison tool, one can make the search process times easier. In the process of choosing between St. Barnabas Hospital (SBH, 2013) and Lincoln Hospital (HHC, 2013), the tool known as Medicare gov. Hospital Compare (Hospital Compare, n. d.) was used, which made the process incredibly fast and allowed for evaluating the key features of each of the hospitals.
Main body
The program was rather easy to use. The only actions that it required were entering the ZIP code and the name of the hospital. The latter, however, caused some troubles; for example, the tool did not recognize the abbreviation “St.” and only provided the results when the name of the institution was spelled fully, i.e.., “Saint Barnabas Hospital.”
The tool provided quite relevant information. Apart from patients’ reviews, which are always interesting to consult, the tool offered the statistics regarding the number of people healed, the number of deaths, medical payment and the hospitals’ financial strategy, the use of medical imaging, such as MRIs, CT scans, etc. The given information is very helpful when picking the right healthcare service to apply to. The “Patient Survey Results” rubrics seemed the most important to me, seeing how it showed the efficacy of treatment approaches adopted by the healthcare specialists, a very important aspect of medical institution performance (Andersen & Rice, 2007).
The purpose of this program is obvious – it is supposed to help people choose the healthcare facilities that are most suitable for their needs. Therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that the given tool should be used to get the general information when defining the right hospital to be treated in. It is necessary to keep in mind, though, that, while being specific, the information provided by the tool does not concern the actual description of the treatment methods used by the healthcare specialists, or the comparison in the qualification of the specialists. Therefore, the tool should be used at the very first stage of choosing a hospital and should provide at least three results, which later on will be compared with the help of a closer analysis.
Conclusion
While the Medicare gov. Hospital Compare tool cannot be considered the ultimate method of choosing between two medical institutions, one must admit that it provides enough evidence for the patient to make his/her decision and pick the one that suits his/her needs.
Reference List
Andersen, R. M., & Rice, T.H. (2007). Changing the U.S. Health care system: Key issues in health services policy and management. New York, NY: Jossey-Bass.
Cronquist, R. & Spector, N. (2011). Nurses and social media: Regulatory concerns and guidelines. Journal for Nursing Regulation, 2(3), pp. 37–40. Web.
HHC (2013). Lincoln Medical Center. Web.
Hospital Compare (n. d.). Web.
SBH (2013). St. Barnabas Hospital. Web.