The product, Hospital Compare, will allow users to compare hospitals in different US states and research the best medical practices available for treating patients suffering from heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia.
By reporting these kinds of quality measures, hospitals and other providers are motivated to improve care, said Maulik Joshi, president of Delmarva Foundation. In working with local hospitals, we have seen first hand how hospitals are making changes and improving.
Hospital Compare is part of a quality initiative undertaken by the federal government over the past two years that also focuses on improving the quality of care in home health agencies and nursing homes.
The measures on Hospital Compare are derived from data from each hospital’s patient records. They are designed to enable more scientifically based comparisons of different hospitals on a national basis by encouraging users to consider factors such as the availability of aspirin and Beta blocker, the facility’s capabilities of checking the pump action of the left heart chamber among patients suffering from heart failure and whether it provides an antibiotic within four hours of arrival for pneumonia and provides patients pneumonia vaccinations before they leave the hospital.
