HOW HOSPITALS COMPARE ON QUALITY

The measures reported on the site are tied to four conditions: infections, heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. These are "quality of care" measures, meaning they report how often certain best practices for patient care have been followed.

Many of the practices being measured are hard for someone who isn’t a physician or nurse to understand. What’s important is that these practices are well accepted nationally as steps that should be taken in the care of the patient. For example, some measures include whether a heart attack patient was given aspirin upon arrival at the hospital or if a blood test was performed on a patient with pneumonia, or if a patient received an assessment of his or her heart function for heart failure.

This data is constantly collected and reported by the federal government, through Hospital Compare.
Hospitals voluntarily update and report their data every quarter to the Hospital Compare site. The site displays the data reported for the most recently available 12 months.

The measures that appear on this Web site include:

• Appropriate Care Measures
• Quality of Care Measures