You can get a “snapshot” of the quality of the hospitals in your area and across the nation by looking at:
- Overall hospital quality star rating: Summarizes a variety of measures shown on Hospital Compare into a single star rating, making it easier to compare hospitals side by side.
- General information: Name, address, telephone number, type of hospital, and other general information about the hospital.
- Survey of patients’ experiences: How patients recently discharged from the hospital responded to a survey about their hospital experience. The survey asked questions like how well a hospital’s doctors and nurses communicated with the patient.
- Timely & effective care: How often or how quickly hospitals give recommended treatments known to get the best results for people with certain common conditions, and how hospitals use outpatient medical imaging tests (like CT scans and MRIs).
- Complications & deaths: How likely it is that patients will have complications while in the hospital or after certain inpatient surgical procedures, and how often patients died within 30 days of being in the hospital for a specific condition.
- Unplanned hospital visits: Whether patients return to a hospital after an initial hospital stay or outpatient procedure, and how much time they spend back in the hospital.
- Psychiatric unit services: Whether inpatient psychiatric facilities, which include psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units, deliver quality care in areas like preventive care and screening, substance use treatment, patient safety, and follow-up care.
- Payment & value of care: How payments made for patients treated at a particular hospital compare to all hospitals nationally, and the value of care provided by individual hospitals.
