Do Hospital Ratings Matter?

Younger people who make more money and have a college education are most likely to care about hospital ratings.  Not a big surprise.  But, less than half of those surveyed by the Thomson Reuters 2010 PULSE Healthcare Survey were “very likely” to even look for a hospital rating.  In my opinion, we’re still in a world where we make decisions about our healthcare facilities by looking out the windshield of our car.  [borrowing from someone’s else’s analogy]

I’m not sure I understand why income isn’t a straight line correlation with this.  It’s those making >$100K and then those making less than $25K that are most likely to look for a hospital rating. 

As you get into the impact of the ratings, I thought there were several interesting things.  For example:

• Younger people were more likely to change hospitals because of a low rating, but least likely to be influenced by a top rating. 
• For a serious illness, younger people were more likely to be influenced by the top rating while older people were more likely to choose the local hospital over the top rated hospital.
• Education was clearly correlated with choice especially when faced with a serious illness.

This generally correlates with the infographic I shared previously on millenials.