The site, which includes information on more than 4,200 hospitals nationwide, is the result of a collaboration between the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Hospital Quality Alliance, a group of organizations that represent hospitals, doctors, employers, accrediting organizations, other Federal agencies and the public.

The Hospital Quality Alliance includes the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals and the American Association of Medical Colleges. Hospital data for the Hospital Compare website is reported voluntarily to CMS.

Life-Saving Information

Hospital Compare “shows consumers how often their local hospitals are using procedures known to give patients the best chance of surviving and recovering from heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia and other serious illnesses,” said David Schulke, Executive Vice President of the American Health Quality Association (AHQA), which represents the national network of health care Quality Improvement Organizations (QIOs).

“This information about hospitals will save lives not only by encouraging consumers to be vigilant, but also because it will motivate hospital boards and executives to engage more extensively in the quality improvement activities of their staff and physicians,” Schulke said.

Performance Areas Evaluated Separately

The new Hospital Compare website shows that hospitals vary tremendously from one to another in their performance. It also shows that the quality of care varies a great deal within the walls of a single hospital. For example, a hospital may provide excellent care for pneumonia patients, but fall far short of the best care for heart attack patients.

“When hospitals advertise to consumers, they market the whole institution, but there is nothing about working under the same roof that ensures that physicians and clinical teams will work together effectively," Schulke noted.

"A primary determinant of hospital quality is how well teams of health care professionals communicate and support each other every day in each clinical service. Hospital management can improve quality for their entire institutions by making the variation of quality performance in distinct clinical areas the top agenda item in every board meeting, and by supporting efforts by clinical teams to work together more effectively on the front lines of care,” said Schulke.

Self-Improvement Tool

A major goal of the Hospital Compare website is to allow hospital board members and senior executives to see how their hospitals stack up against other local institutions and national averages.

“Hospital Compare will show hospital leaders where they need to improve,” Schulke said. “Hospitals want to do the best for their patients. We hope that publishing this information will motivate them to invest more in working with doctors, pharmacists and nurses to improve the quality of care.”

Although the quality measures reported on Hospital Compare currently reflect hospital efforts to deliver effective care only for heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia, the site is expected to add information on hospital performance in other clinical areas where use of best practices has a critical impact on patient safety, such as procedures that can be used to avoid surgical infections.

QIOs Aid Quality Monitoring

Under contract to Medicare, QIOs have been working with hospitals around the country in these clinical areas for more than a decade, providing onsite training in the implementation of best practices. In an effort to teach hospital staff how to monitor their own quality, QIOs also have been helping hospitals abstract, submit and validate data on these measures over the past two years.

Quality measures on Hospital Compare for heart attacks, for example, show the percentage of patients at each hospital given aspirin at arrival, aspirin at discharge, beta blockers at arrival, beta blockers at discharge, and ACE inhibitors for left ventricular systolic dysfunction. Patients who should not receive aspirin or these other drugs are not included in the calculation of the hospital’s quality performance in providing treatment.

“As hospitals make a commitment to use performance data to drive quality improvement programs, there is a QIO in every state ready to assist. This is a service paid for by Medicare to improve quality and reduce costly errors that harm the elderly and disabled, and we encourage hospitals to take advantage of it.” Schulke said.

On the AHQA website, hospitals can find contact information for local QIOs as well as identify hundreds of hospitals working with QIOs to implement best practices in all clinical areas reported on Hospital Compare.