FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Joe Martin, Communications Director
717-232-6787 or
Certificate Award Recipients for Calendar Year 1999
Harrisburg, PA - August 7, 2000 - The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council is awarding its third annual Certificates of Achievement to 104 inpatient and 121 ambulatory/outpatient health care facilities for meeting PHC4 guidelines for accurate and timely data submission in 1999. Data submitted on time and with an error ratio of less than 25% was necessary to make the grade.
"We wish to recognize those facilities and their staff for their efforts in providing consistent, timely and accurate information about the cost and quality of health care," stated Marc P. Volavka, Executive Director of the Council. "By working cooperatively, hospitals and state government can provide valuable information to consumers, purchasers, providers and policymakers in Pennsylvania."
Each year the Council collects forty-eight fields of data from more than three million inpatient and ambulatory/outpatient hospital records of Pennsylvania facilities. The Council has used these data to produce more than one hundred public reports on the performance outcomes of hospitals, physicians, and health care plans in Pennsylvania since PHC4's inception in 1986. In addition, PHC4 produced 142 special data requests for customers in 1999 alone.
The Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council is an independent state agency responsible for addressing the cost and quality of health care in Pennsylvania. The Council promotes health care competition through the collection, analysis, and public distribution of cost and quality health care information.