This report is based on information from Hospital Compare, a website created through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) along with the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). The HQA is a public-private collaboration established to promote reporting on hospital quality of care.

Hospital Compare displays rates for Process of Care measures that show how often hospitals provide some of the care that is recommended for patients with cataract surgery, a colonoscopy, a heart attack, emergency department care, preventative care, a stroke, a blood clot, or childbirth. Hospitals voluntarily submit data from their medical records about the treatments their patients receive for these conditions, including patients with Medicare and those who do not have Medicare.

Information about Hospital Performance

Hospital performance rates tell you the proportion of cases where a hospital provided the recommended process of care. Only patients meeting the inclusion criteria for a measure are included in the calculation of the rate for a measure. A rate of 88% means that the hospital provided the recommended process of care 88% of the time. For example, the rates for initial antibiotic timing tell you the percentage of patients who received their first dose of antibiotics within four hours of arrival to the hospital. Higher scores are better. Hospitals with effective quality improvement programs are continually working toward this goal. The information posted on this website comes from the quality data submitted by hospitals to the QIO Clinical Data Warehouse for inpatient discharges.