New Web site compares hospital care

[TechBear_Seattle]

Source: Seattle Post-Intelligencer

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is running ads in both Seattle daily newspapers Wednesday showing consumers how to compare services and quality of care in area hospitals by using a new Web site.

The ads, which are running in more than 50 other newspapers across the country, promote Hospital Compare, hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, a Web site that scores 26 quality and patient satisfaction measures at nearly 4,000 hospitals nationwide.

In the Seattle area, the list covers hospitals from Auburn to Everett. The site compares such categories as how much procedures -- say, gall bladder removal or heart surgeries -- cost at the different hospitals. Consumers can compare measures such as how well patients said their doctors communicated with them and how clean their rooms or bathrooms were.

Consumers can also compare Medicare payments for such things as diabetes care. For example, of the 16 hospitals in a 25-mile radius of Seattle, payments for adult diabetes care ranges from $4,292 at Overlake Medical Center in Bellevue to $6,834 at Harborview Medical Center.



Read more: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/363904_ratehospitals21.html

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The ads start running this morning, so I believe this is in the 12 hour window of "late breaking."

[Warpy]

1. Patients are handed little survey forms the day they're discharged

and most of them will report satisfaction since they survived the experience. Closer questioning (which I did when I had time) would reveal that many of them were deeply dissatisfied with everything from housekeeping to call bell response time, especially at night and due to short staffing.

Don't expect this survey to show much.

[kickysnana]

2. BTW It can only be filed by the patient not the survivors of the patient,

...eliminates feedback from those who died or unable to fill out the form, which I imagine makes a big favorable bias in the poll.

I filled it out and sent it back to the head of the hospital and got an "I'm sorry" but our experience did not go into this hospitals ratings.