Hospital Report Cards - Is Your Hospital Passing?
Do you know how your hospital is doing in terms of safety? You can find out how DC area hospitals rate on the web with just a few easy clicks. You can check the quality of a local hospital before you or your loved one are ever admitted. This can be done from your own home by checking a goverment website called Hospital Compare. Beginning in April of 2005, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), the American Hospital Association, and others with the support of the Agency for Healthcare Research & Quality (AHRQ) began a project to measure hospital quality by comparing outcomes for treatment of certain conditions and certain clinical parameters. Hospitals are currently reporting on measures which include how well patients fared for treatent of heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and prevention of surgical infection. Other measures will be added as the program continues. The goal of the program is to identify a robust set of standardized quality measures that will be easy for the public to understand in order to improve quality of care and allow consumers to make informed choices about their healthcare.
The ultimate goal is to have all hospitals reporting on many different measures. To find out more information about this program, you can go to Hospital Compare or visit the website for the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.