Guide to Hospitals

Abstract

Guide to Hospitals. Washington, D.C.: Consumers' Checkbook (Center for the Study of Services), 2002. www.checkbook.org/hospital. $19.95 for two years of online access. Guide to Top Doctors. Washington, D.C.: Consumers' Checkbook (Center for the Study of Services), 2002. www.checkbook.org/cgi-bin/health/topdoctors/ default.cfm. $19.95 for two years of online access. Requirements: Internet Explorer 4.0 or higher, AOL 4.0 or higher, or Netscape 5.0 or higher. The Center for the Study of Services is, per its Web site, an independent, nonprofit consumer organization founded in 1974 with the help of funding from the U.S. Office of Consumer Affairs. Supported entirely by subscriptions, donations, and fees, it does not accept advertising. It publishes a number of guides including the two under review. There are a number of free Web sites that rate hospitals, including U.S. News and World Report (www. usnews.com/usnews/nycu/health/ho sptl/tophosp.htm), which ranks 205 medical centers. The American Hospital Directory (www.ahd.com) contains rating information for more than six thousand hospitals, but detailed reports are available by subscription only, at a cost of $395 per year for a single-user license. The Leapfrog Group (www.leapfroggroup.org) rates hospitals on three quality measures and contains information on only 672 hospitals. Free information on hospital quality will soon be available via Medicare (www.medicare.gov). Guide to Hospitals is a very easy-to-use site that rates 4,500 American acute care hospitals. It includes comparisons by death or adverse outcome from more than twenty types of procedures, and diagnoses include kidney failure, stroke, and heart attack; a rating of more than 1,300 acute care hospitals for such topics as high-risk delivery and low-risk adult surgery; JCAHO (Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) scores; and a detailed report on each hospital including accreditation, medical school affiliation, and number of beds. The user starts by either displaying all hospitals within a two- to seventy-five-mile radius of any zip code, or if a broader geographic range is desired, choosing to compare hospitals in different parts of the country (including U.S. territories), and then as many hospitals as desired. Listings can be sorted in a variety of ways including alphabetically or by scores in such categories as Desirability Scores for High-Risk Delivery of a Baby or Desirability Scores for Complex Adult Medical Care. …