Commonwealth Fund launches hospital ratings site

The Commonwealth Fund has launched a new web resource at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement's National Forum, in Nashville, La., which will make public the competing hospital quality ratings systems.

The site, www.WhyNotTheBest.org, offers side-by-side comparisons of all 4,500 U.S. hospitals, drawing on data from Medicare's Hospital Compare site and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems.

According to Commonwealth Fund executives, one difference between its site and competitors is that most of these sites do not compare hospitals head-to-head. Also, other report card sites do not provide hospitals any resources to help them improve, according to Anne-Marie Audet, a physician and vice president of quality improvement and efficiency with the Commonwealth Fund.

To help hospitals make improvements, the site provides tools from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement, along with case studies portraying how high-performing sites operate.

Meanwhile, for consumers, the site offers scores on clinical performance, such as the rate at which pneumonia patients get the right antibiotics, along with patient satisfaction data.

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