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Web Resources: Choosing A Hospital

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By MARY SHEDDEN | The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 29, 2008

There's a plethora of websites offering advice on choosing a hospital. Many others rate medical services using a variety of criteria – from patient surveys to government data. Here's a sampling:

http://www.ahrq.gov/consumer/qnt/qnthosp.htm#choosing – The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's recommended checklist for choosing a hospital.

http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/CompareCare/SelectChoice.aspx The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration's site to view results on health care facility performance, outcome data and information on selected medical conditions and procedures.

www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov – U.S. Health and Human Services compares how hospitals care for adult patients with certain conditions or procedures. It includes data voluntarily submitted by hospitals, government surveys and Medicare data, and tracks issues such as the rate of death for heart attack and heart failure patients.

http://www.qualitycheck.org/ - The independent not-for-profit Joint Commission's database of health care organizations. The commission, which evaluates and considers accreditation for more than 15,000 groups, is overseen by a board of doctors, nurses and consumers.

http://www.consumerreports.org/health/doctors-and-hospitals - Consumer Reports new hospital rating based on the type of care provided to adult Medicare patients being treated for chronic diseases including cancer, dementia, heart and vascular disease.

http://www.leapfroggroup.org/for_consumers - This consortium of large health care purchasers created its own survey to judge hospital quality and safety.

http://www.dartmouthatlas.org/ - The Dartmouth Atlas Project uses Medicare data to analyze and compare how medicine is practiced across the country. It can search on a national or local basis, and is the impetuous for the Consumer Reports Health.org comparison of aggressive and conservative hospital care.

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