Our parents tend to go to hospitals that their physician recommends, because they do not like to question their physician and trust their judgement.  While that generally has been accepted practice in the past, our generation and future generations, are now starting to look more into “where can I get the best care?” then search for a physician in that Healthcare System, as well as which facility will honor their Health Insurance coverage.

If you have been hospitalized recently, you will most like receive a survey to rate your experience in care.  This information is used by the hospital for performance improvement projects, because they are now in a market that competes against eachother.  These surveys, however, are not public knowledge, so when a decision for healthcare is made, the consumer will not know how the hospital performs.

There is a newly created website by the Centers for Medicare and Medicade Services (CMS) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) that now publically compares local hospitals in some very key areas:

Hospital Care

Surgical Care

Heart Attack Care

Pneumonia Care

Heart Failure Care

Children’s Asthma Care

Hospital Outcomes

Survey of Patients

You may visit this website at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov to search for local healthcare providers in your area.  When visiting this website, you can search and compare and then decide where you would like to receive your care and compare the services at other facilities by answering a few short questions.

Healthcare institutions now use this information, to see how they compare to their competitors and continue to build Performance Improvement processes/projects to improve their scores.

Competition helps healthcare institutions provide better service because they want to be YOUR provider of choice.  People now have more choices of where to receive care verses accepting what used to be “the closest and most convenient.”

 
Become an educated consumer by reviewing this website.