Check up on your hospital

Some hospitals really are better than others. Though no single source of comparative information will answer every question you might have, the amount of hospital information out there is growing, even though it's limited. Here are some entities with sites we recommend (including our own).

Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
(click on Report Card Compendium)

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.

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services

Free hospital comparisons 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 have declined to make that information public.) Military and Veterans Health Administration facilities are not included.

Commonwealth Fund

Free 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.

Consumer Reports Health

Our Patient Ratings (available to subscribers) compare hospitals based on overall satisfaction as well as specific features from the Medicare surveys mentioned above. Subscribers can also learn whether hospitals in their area provide conservative or aggressive care to people with long-term, serious illnesses. Nonsubscribers can look up basic hospital information, such as location and size.

The Joint Commission

Free site of 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.

Leapfrog Group

Free ratings from a nonprofit employer-advocacy group on overall patient safety and the safety of selected procedures, based on a voluntary annual survey of 1,276 general acute-care hospitals representing 53 percent of the hospital beds in 37 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.

U.S. News & World Report

Free online rankings of medical centers in 16 specialties, based on criteria including reputation among physicians, and care-related factors such as technology, patient volume, nurse staffing, and mortality rates. The site also ranks children's hospitals in 10 specialties and includes more-limited information on 1,500 other hospitals. Information on the Web site was current at press time.