Gary Passama

Gary Passama retired as president and CEO of NorthBay Healthcare on March 31, 2017. An active blogger since 2010, here’s a collection of his work.

Ranking Last

April 28, 2015
 

On a recent Sunday morning, I opened one of our local newspapers only to see a headline spread across the front page: "Solano ranks last in Bay Area for health."That's terrible, I thought. What goes here?The article was kind of a mess. It conflated several different studies and confused the situation further by quoting several local health experts who offered their own speculation about Solano's low ranking.

The writer did the best he could with a confusing set of data and opinions.

So I took the time to find the study on which the news story was based. In reading the eight-page summary, here is what I found:

  • Solano County did indeed rank last among Bay Area counties in both health outcomes and health factors. But Bay Area counties were among the healthiest in the state.
  • Looking at the entire state, however, Solano landed in the middle of the rankings for both health outcomes and health factors.

Not as a grim a picture as it might seem at first glance, but still something worthy to work to improve.

Much of NorthBay Healthcare's investment in the future is aimed directly at helping people improve and maintain a healthy status. Our medical fitness center, currently under construction on our Vacaville campus, is one example. It will anchor a new development we call our "Wellness Center."

A key component of the Wellness Center is expanded quarters for NorthBay Center for Diabetes and Endocrinology. NorthBay's two endocrinologists and their professional and support staff have made inroads on the plague of diabetes, which affects Solano County. We have by far the most complete program in Solano County to deal with this chronic disease.

We also have in Vacaville our functional medicine program, which looks at health through a different prism. It has had great success in helping people change the way they live and in the process improve their health status. The results in some cases have been amazing.

Much of the data used in the study was more than three years old. The way data is collected makes it inevitable that some will be outdated by the time it is published.

As we continue our wellness work, NorthBay can help raise Solano's ranking both in the Bay Area and statewide.

Comments

 
  1. Gary Passama
    May 05, 2015 at 08:03
     

    The problem with the rankings is that the various agencies and organizations issuing them use different measures to judge "excellence" and sometimes come to the subject with agendas which are less than objective. It has become a growth industry with the multitude of rankings now being publicized.

     
  2. Merry Bern
    April 30, 2015 at 03:58
     

    I wholeheartedly agree with the optimism voiced regarding NorthBay's wellness-oriented programs, But the title, Ranking Last, is what attracted my attention. I thought you might be talking about the fact that CMS has decided to "dumb down" the patient satisfaction scores on the HCAHPS Hospital Compare website to star levels, akin to those seen in online hotel rankings. Medicare's stated goal in adopting the star method was to "make it easier" to spotlight excellence on the website. Curious, I spot-checked area hospitals. Most of us got 3 stars. Contra Costa Regional Med Center got 2. Woodland Memorial got 4. Clearly, their metrics aren't measuring actual excellence.

     
 

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