
By MICHAEL MILLENSON
When the Philadelphia Eagles thrashed the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in Super Bowl, no one disputed that they sat at the peak of professional football. In contrast, NYU Langone Health’s multi-million-dollar Super Bowl ad claiming “#1 for quality care in the U.S.” gave viewers just 2 seconds to read the very small print at the bottom of the screen providing an obscure justification for that championship status.
It read: “2024 Vizient Quality and Accountability Ranking. Ranked #1 out of 115 participating comprehensive academic medical centers.” Huh?
I’ll discuss in a moment what that attribution – meaningless to even most in health care, much less to any significant slice of the 127 million people watching the game – actually signifies. But perhaps the most salient signal of the misplaced focus of U.S. health care is that online and media reaction focused exclusively on the non-profit system paying an estimated $8 million for the 30-second spot. Yet if the data actually support NYU Langone’s assertion that it’s “the best health system,” as the ad trumpeted, shouldn’t they be praised for competing on the quality of patient care rather than the quality of the pull-on-the-emotions advertising typical of most hospitals?
I reached out multiple times to NYU Langone and Vizient in order to dig more deeply and didn’t hear back from either, so let’s examine the information that’s publicly available.
While many Americans know of the hospital rankings by U.S. News & World Report, Vizient plays an insider game. Its roots are as a group purchasing organization; i.e., a membership group hospitals join to secure volume discounts on supplies and other purchases. However, Vizient has evolved to provide a heavy dose of member consulting services ; it now calls itself “the nation’s leading healthcare performance improvement company.”
Continue reading…