Hospitals periodically develop an allergy to public reporting of the quality of their care and, their leaders being as human as the rest of us, who can blame them? Most people would run from that kind of scrutiny.

The thing is, though, it works.

Hospital care has continued to improve in Western New York and around the state, according to the latest report from the Niagara Health Quality Coalition. Other factors may be influencing the hospitals’ improving quality of care, but without doubt, a prominent one is that the data is reported to the public. That’s a powerful incentive to perform.

Here are some of the key statewide findings:

Mortality rates for certain procedures and conditions in hospitals have improved by an average of 40 percent since 2002, the first year quality data was disclosed.

The number of hospitals performing complex procedures below the number recommended as needed for staff to be proficient has declined by 24 percent.

Hospitals improved on 8 out of 10 error rates that the coalition measures, although surgical infection rates were a notable exception.

In Western New York, only three of 15 hospitals were worse than the state average for preventable readmissions.

Still, significant variances remain in certain quality areas. Three regional hospitals reported death rates for acute stroke that were notably worse than the state average. Eight performed significantly better than the state average on post-operative embolisms and three performed better than the state average on post-operative infections.

The Niagara Health Quality Coalition was one of the first organizations in the country to publicly report quality measures, and its report card contains the most comprehensive set of patient safety and error measures available in the state. Plainly, work remains. But this report is powerful evidence that the neutral collection and publication of data on the quality of care serves the public interest. That makes hospital officials uncomfortable sometimes, but it also makes their hospitals better.