Hospital Care Quality Tool
June 2, 2008 by Becky Ramsey
Filed under Business
Have you had a chance to check out the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) hospital quality tool, Hospital Compare?
The tool is a product of a collaboration between DHHS, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), and the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). It allows patients to search and compare hospitals based on the following four categories:
- hospital process of care measures
- hospital outcome of care measures
- survey of patients’ hospital experiences
- medicare payment and volume
Information about patients’ hospital experiences, which might be the most interesting to people trying to find and compare hospitals, was gathered via a 9-month long Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey.
I took a tour through the site and my first impression was that there was a lot of jargon for a site aimed at consumers of various occupation and educational backgrounds. Terms like “process measures” and “outcome measures” don’t mean something to everyone who might be searching the site. However, the site does offer plenty of links and tabs that provide further information about what the site is intended to do and what terms mean. I still wonder if this site is user-friendly, and I also worry, as I always do when it comes to Web sites, if this information will only ever reach those with access to the internet and with the knowledge that tools like this exist.
Give the Hospital Compare tool a spin, compare a few hospitals, and post your thoughts about it here.
Sources:
Hospital Ratings Become Public Knowledge – HealthNews, May 28, 2008
Hospital Compare – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS)
