Use our hospital ratings to find a good hospital in your area. Even if you don't have a choice in hospitals, our ratings can help you identify and be prepared for any potential problems at the hospital you do go to.
We rate hospitals using three major measures:
Patient experience: Based on a government survey of millions of patients, these ratings tell you whether patients would recommend the hospital, their overall assessment of it, and their experience with topics such as communication with doctors and nurses, pain control, and whether their rooms were kept clean and quiet. Read more.
Patient outcomes: These ratings, based on data submitted by hospitals to the federal government, or states, provide information on how well hospitals prevent bloodstream and surgical-site infections, and the chance that patients have to be readmitted to a hospital within 30 days of their initial discharge. The need for such readmission can indicate problems in care while the patient was first hospitalized, including a hospital-acquired infection. Read more.
Hospital practices: Two measures are included under this heading, the use of electronic health records, and the appropriate use of CT scanning. The ratings for electronic health records are based on a survey of hospitals conducted by the American Hospital Association on the extent to which a hospital uses a computerized system for documenting physicans' and nurses' notes, viewing lab reports, and other purposes. The ratings for CT scanning comes from billing data submitted to CMS that calculates the percent of scans of the abdomen and chest that are performed twice, once with and once without a dye. Such scans usually aren't necessary and can expose you to unnecessary radiation.
Safety score: This is a summary of several key categories related to hospital safety: avoiding infections, avoiding readmissions, communicating about new medications and discharge, appropriate use of chest and abdominal CT scanning, avoiding serious complications, and avoiding mortality. The score is expressed on 100-point scale. A hospital would score 100 if it earned the highest possible score in all measures and would score 1 if it earned the lowest scores in all measures. All of the categories are worth 20 points except for avoiding complications and avoiding mortality, each of which are worth 10 points. Read more.
Avoiding adverse events in surgical patients. This rating is based on the percentage of patients undergoing scheduled surgery who died in the hospital or stayed longer than expected for their procedure. Research shows those measures are correlated with complications, and some hospitals themselves use this approach to monitor quality. To develop the ratings, we worked with MPA, a healthcare consulting firm with expertise in analyzing billing claims and clinical records data and in helping hospitals use the information to improve patient safety. In addition to an overall surgery rating summarizing results for 27 different kinds of surgeries, we also provide surgery ratings for five specific types of surgeries: back surgery, hip and knee replacement, angioplasty, and carotid artery surgery. The ratings are based on billing data submitted by hospitals to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Read more.
Consider Other Sources of Information
In addition to our hospital ratings, consider these other sources of information:
Hospital Compare Comparisons of hospitals based on government surveys of patient experience.
The Commonwealth Fund Performance data on hospitals nationwide from a private foundation.
The Joint Commission Data from a nonprofit group that inspects and accredits most U.S. hospitals.
The Leapfrog Group Information from a nonprofit e