Not all hospitals are created equal. If you ever need one, your health and even your life may depend on how well equipped the facility is to treat your condition and even how clean and well organized it is.
More than 1,000 people a day die in U.S. hospitals due to preventable medication errors or other mistakes. All told, about 440,000 people a year, roughly the population of Miami, die from hospital safety mistakes.
Do you know how good your local hospital is, and what your options are? Now is the time to find out.
"People shouldn’t feel like they have only one hospital to go to because it is in their community and the one everyone else goes to," says Erica Mobley, a spokesperson for The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization and one of several groups that rate hospitals. Taking an active role in choosing your hospital is wise, she says. "Do it before you are sick."
Of course, if it's an emergency you may not have a choice in where the ambulance takes you (though you can make a request, which the driver may or may not honor depending on a variety of factors). But in plenty of situations, including non-emergencies, you may have a choice.
What is your hospital's safety score or reputation?
You can find out how your hospital performs on safety by doing some easy online research.
Hospital Safety Score. Start by going to Hospital Safety Score, Leapfrog's site. Search by zip code or city and state. Hospitals get a letter grade, from A to F. Of the more than 2,500 hospitals issued a score, 782 got an A, 719 a B, 859 a C, 143 a D and 20 an F in the most recent ratings. Users can compare previous scores to see if the hospital is improving or declining.
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Hospital Compare. To find out how Medicare rates your hospital, go to Hospital Compare. You can search for hospitals by zip code or facility name. (The list even includes children’s hospitals.) The tool tells let you compare two or more hospitals’ complication rates, unplanned readmission rates (how often patients released from the hospital need to return within 30 days due to a problem), death rates and effective care rates for certain conditions. The effective care rates are based on whether the hospitals provide care that research shows gets the best results for conditions such as heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia.
You can even compare how well the nurses communicate and see how the hospital compares with others in your state and with the national norm.
More than 1,000 people a day die in U.S. hospitals due to preventable medication errors or other mistakes. All told, about 440,000 people a year, roughly the population of Miami, die from hospital safety mistakes.
Do you know how good your local hospital is, and what your options are? Now is the time to find out.
"People shouldn’t feel like they have only one hospital to go to because it is in their community and the one everyone else goes to," says Erica Mobley, a spokesperson for The Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization and one of several groups that rate hospitals. Taking an active role in choosing your hospital is wise, she says. "Do it before you are sick."
Of course, if it's an emergency you may not have a choice in where the ambulance takes you (though you can make a request, which the driver may or may not honor depending on a variety of factors). But in plenty of situations, including non-emergencies, you may have a choice.
What is your hospital's safety score or reputation?
You can find out how your hospital performs on safety by doing some easy online research.
Hospital Safety Score. Start by going to Hospital Safety Score, Leapfrog's site. Search by zip code or city and state. Hospitals get a letter grade, from A to F. Of the more than 2,500 hospitals issued a score, 782 got an A, 719 a B, 859 a C, 143 a D and 20 an F in the most recent ratings. Users can compare previous scores to see if the hospital is improving or declining.
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Hospital Compare. To find out how Medicare rates your hospital, go to Hospital Compare. You can search for hospitals by zip code or facility name. (The list even includes children’s hospitals.) The tool tells let you compare two or more hospitals’ complication rates, unplanned readmission rates (how often patients released from the hospital need to return within 30 days due to a problem), death rates and effective care rates for certain conditions. The effective care rates are based on whether the hospitals provide care that research shows gets the best results for conditions such as heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia.
You can even compare how well the nurses communicate and see how the hospital compares with others in your state and with the national norm.