Check up on your hospital

Some hospitals really are better than others. To help you find a good one, start with our hospital Ratings. But you might also want use some other sources of information, too. Here are a few worth checking out:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality

Links to more than 200 examples of report cards on hospitals, health plans, doctors, and other health providers. You can search by state, type of report, or sponsor (for instance, a government agency or health plan) and then click through to the outside link. Data might not be current, and not all of the sites linked to are free, but it is a useful starting place for your search. The compendium excludes reports that focus on a single institution's performance or that are not directly related to quality.

Hospital Compare

Run by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this site compares hospitals based on surveys of patient experience with key aspects of care, such as the quality of communication with doctors and nurses, adequacy of pain control, cleanliness of rooms, and effective discharge planning. Comparisons include the volume of certain procedures, death and readmission rates, and how often hospitals provide care known to get good results, such as the proper use of antibiotics to prevent surgical infections and the use of beta-blockers to prevent repeat heart attacks. (Some hospitals don't make that information public.) Military and Veterans Health Administration facilities aren't included.

The Commonwealth Fund

Performance data on hospitals nationwide from a private foundation. Users can search for hospitals by state, county, ownership, size, or hospital type. The site incorporates Medicare's patient survey and hospital quality measures. It also provides an "overall quality measure." Users can compare hospital quality scores against national and state benchmarks.

The Joint Commission

Information from a nonprofit group that inspects and accredits most U.S. hospitals. It allows you to search for selected hospital information from the reports on the commission's inspection visits, which occur at least every three years. You can also see how a hospital compares with others.

The Leapforg Group

Information from a nonprofit employer-advocacy group on overall patient safety and the safety of selected procedures, based on a voluntary annual survey of over 1,000 general acute-care hospitals representing more than half of the hospital beds in many major U.S. metropolitan areas. Users can compare safety practices applicable to most hospitalized patients, such as the use of computerized systems to order medications. The site also allows searches for safety practices associated with specific high-risk procedures, including heart bypass surgery, angioplasty, aortic valve replacement, pancreatic and esophageal resection, weight-loss surgery, and high-risk deliveries.

The U.S. News & World Report

Information of medical centers in 16 adult specialties and 10 pediatric specialties, based on criteria including reputation among physicians, and care-related factors such as technology, patient volume, nurse staffing, and mortality rates.