News & World Report and "Quality Check" from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations), as well as a listing of reports by selected states (California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin).Ĭonsumer Reports provides some interpretative advice: if needing surgery and having a choice of hospitals, choose those with higher volume numbers or whose death rates seem lower than others in the region. The listing includes those with national scope (such as the "America’s Best Hospitals" from U.S. In the left-hand column of this article, ConsumerReports.Org links to a useful directory of other hospital report cards, advising readers that these do not use a standardize report format, nor do they use they same measures for quality care.
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This article gives excellent advice to consumers about how to maximize the quality of care received when hospitalized. To connect, go to and click on the "Health and Fitness" tab under "Health Care" click on "more" and then under "Doctors and insurance," you will find Hospitals: how safe?). In January 2003, ConsumerReports.Org did an article on "How safe is your hospital?" (This has a very long Web address. The site also includes sections on data collection directed both to consumers and professionals, as well as links to other related resources. The site also provides general information about the quality care measures: what they are and a brief explanation of them and a statement of why there are sometimes exceptions to recommended care. It is also possible to connect to the data tables which show how many patients were treated by the selected hospital(s). The system provides a bar chart comparing the selected hospital(s) to the national and regional averages. Then the consumer chooses the condition and treatment of interest.
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Mark McClellan, administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has said that "We strongly believe that payment incentives work to get quality reporting and quality improvement, when we use measures that are clinically valid and feasible to produce."Ī consumer can search for hospital information by state, county, city, zip code, or by hospital name. Medicare payments will increasingly be connected to quality measures such as these. Future reports will include the extent of post-surgical infections and patient satisfaction. For pneumonia care, for example, the report compares the percentage of patients that received an initial antibiotic within 4 hours of arriving at the hospital. In this first phase of the report card, hospitals are measured on how often they follow nationally recognized treatment guidelines, as opposed to patient outcomes. A random check is done against actual patient files to insure accuracy of the submission.
Hospitals report their data quarterly to a state agency. The data collected are not restricted to that from elderly and disabled patients, but are from all patients with the selected conditions regardless of age. Hospital participation is voluntary, although all but the smallest hospitals potentially may lose a portion of their Medicare payments if they elect not to participate. More than 4,200 acute-care hospitals and critical access hospitals are participating. This includes Federal agencies, consumer groups, employers, accrediting organizations, hospitals, and health providers. This report card is a project of CMS and the Hospital Quality Alliance, which is a public-private collaboration of organizations that support the reporting of hospital quality of care. The CMS public Web site ( provides consumers with information on how often participating hospitals follow recommended guidelines for patients with three specific conditions: heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ( CMS).
The most recent launch of a health report card for hospitals was by the U.S. The Most Recent Report Card: Hospital Compare Although critics charge these quality reports may not be having the intended consequences, it is likely that in an age of increasing accountability and of funding tied to outcomes that we will see more such projects launched followed by refinements in their content and presentation. Report cards have been instituted within the health care delivery system in the past few years to provide consumers with quality measures upon which to base decisions regarding care and to improve quality by encouraging competition among providers.
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