HealthGrades Identifies Hospitals With Highest Patient Satisfaction
"HealthGrades, the nation's leading independent healthcare ratings organization, today identified those hospitals that rank in the top 15 percent nationally in patient experience and posted the hospitals on www.HealthGrades.com. The ratings are based on patient satisfaction survey results that hospital patients provided as part of a new federal initiative to increase public reporting of hospital performance."

Weak Patchwork of Oversight Lets Bad Hospitals Stay Open
"...patients at University were three times as likely to develop infections stemming from hospitals as were patients at the average New York hospital. HealthGrades, a company that rates hospitals using data from Medicare, ranks University among the least safe hospitals in the United States..."

Web site rates hospitals on specific medical procedures
"HealthGrades, a leader in the field of health-care quality measurement, has just published new rankings for hospitals across the country.

The Colorado firm uses an intuitive, consumer-friendly approach: Medical centers get one, three or five stars based on how many patients develop complications and die after receiving treatment."

HealthGrades posts 2009 hospital rankings
"Consumers can look up the HealthGrades' rankings by state and by condition. (Included are back and neck surgery, coronary bypass surgery, prostate surgery, angioplasty, respiratory failure and more.) The information is free on the company's Web site, www.healthgrades.com."

Improvement Seen on Medicare Mortality Rates
"Mortality rates have declined among Medicare patients, but wide gaps in quality of care still exist across the country, according to a new HealthGrades report.

The in-hospital risk-adjusted mortality rate improved at a rate of nearly 14.2% from 2005 to 2007, but the degree to which care improved varied by procedure and diagnosis, according to the 11th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study."

Death Rate 70 Percent Lower at Top Hospitals
"The good news: The nation's in-hospital risk-adjusted mortality rate improved, 14.2 percent on average from 2005 to 2007, HealthGrades announced today in releasing its 11th annual survey on hospital quality. The nation's best-performing hospitals were able to reduce their death rates at a much faster rate than poorly performing hospitals."

Death Rate 70% Lower at Top U.S. Hospitals
"The 11th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study focused on 17 procedures and found that overall death rates declined by 14.7 percent from 2005 to 2007. Top-performing five-star hospitals reduced their death rates at a much faster rate (about 13.2 percent) than poorer-performing one- and three-star hospitals (12.3 and 13.1 percent, respectively), resulting in large state, regional and hospital-to-hospital variations in the quality of patient care."

Study: Five-Star Hospitals Might Not Kill You
"If all hospitals performed as well as 5-star facilities, as ranked by an independent healthcare ratings company, 237,420 U.S. Medicare patient deaths could have been prevented between 2005 and 2007.

That's the upshot of a new study that finds you have a 70 percent lower chance of dying at a facility that is top-ranked by HealthGrades compared to its lowest-ranked ones across 17 procedures and conditions that were the reasons for the hospital visits."

Death Rate 70% Lower at Top US Hospitals
"The 11th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in American Study focused on 17 procedures and found that overall death rates declined by 14.7 percent from..."

You Can Find Dr. Right, With Some Effort
"You may also want to check whether the physician is certified in his or her subspecialty, like treating heart disease or arthritis. Some specialties require recertification every six or eight years. You can check on certification status with the American Board of Medical Specialties, the organization that oversees 24 specialty boards (www.abms.org), and at Web sites like HealthGrades.com..."

Peabody Pays Mayo Clinic Prices to Save on Health-Care Costs
"...to encourage better care by rewarding hospitals that meet national quality standards.
Crowder, 64, drew up a list of hospitals for different procedures based on nationwide quality ratings developed by Health Grades Inc. The Golden, Colorado-based company ranks medical centers using data from sources including Medicare and state health programs."

Useful New Health Tools on the Web
"You don't have to be over 50 to use four helpful health tools newly up on AARP's Web site. They're available to everyone - for free.

...The fourth is a doctor and hospital finder from HealthGrades, a well-known health care information company that lets you look up physicians and medical centers in your area. The focus here is on providers that serve seniors."

Good Health, More Wealth
"You can get a glimpse of just how much medical costs can be, with or without insurance, by going online to sites such as HealthGrades.com, which offers cost reports for 88 procedures and treatments."

AARP Launches Four Online Health Tools to Empower Consumers to Make Informed Choices in Care
"Doctor and Hospital Finder provided by HealthGrades: This tool, from a leading healthcare ratings organization, has been specially customized to AARP's demographic, enabling individuals to easily research doctors and compare the quality ratings of hospitals by specific location and medical condition or specialty."

How to Reduce your Medical Bills
"Other online resources - healthgrades.com shows whether your doctor has been the subject of a malpractice suit or disciplinary action. It provides some hospital ratings for free but charges varying amounts for most reports, including cost estimates for specific medical procedures."

Doctor/Patient - Keys to finding the right Physician
"At healthgrades.com... will yield a report that includes educational background and any disciplinary reports. This information can usually be found elsewhere, free, but the report might also contain satisfaction scores from patients or assessments of the hospital where a doctor has admitting privileges."

Don't become the victim of a surgical error
"You can check out the hospital by going to HealthGrades or The Leapfrog Group, which rank hospitals by specialty. (For example, you can find good places to get hip surgery in Topeka, Kansas, or to have a baby in New York.)"

Inflation - 10 ways to beat the rising cost of living
"Don't be afraid to haggle. If you go out of network or are in a high-deductible health plan, ask the doctor for a discount. You can get an idea of reasonable prices at your insurer's website" or, for a fee, at www.healthgrades.com. One poll says that 60% of patients who negotiate with a doctor succeed. Your best bet: Offer to pay up front in cash. Potential savings $85 for a specialist consultation."

America's Fastest-Growing Small Public Companies
"ON THE FOLLOWING PAGES you'll meet small firms moving at breakneck speeds. As in past years, the companies that earned spots on our eighth annual ranking of the swiftest were screened by Zacks, a financial research firm. To make the cut, each had to post annual revenues of less than $200 million and a stock price of more than $1. Their rankings are based on the past three years' earnings-per-share growth, revenue growth, and stock performance. We excluded banks, real estate firms, and adult-entertainment companies. ...HealthGrades is ranked 35th on this list."

U.S. Hospitals Vary Widely in Caring for Women
"Women who give birth at top-rated hospitals have fewer complications for Caesarean section and fewer complications for vaginal birth, according to a HealthGrades study that compared the quality of maternity and cardiac/stroke care for women at U.S. hospitals in 17 states."

How Hospitals Treat Women
"Today HealthGrades.com, which rates individual hospitals on an assortment of relatively routine procedures such as heart bypass surgery and C-sections, ..."

Medical costs - Don't be afraid to haggle
"If you go out of network or are in a high-deductible health plan, ask the doctor for a discount. You can get an idea of reasonable prices at your insurer's website or, for a fee, at healthgrades.com. One poll says that 60% of patients who negotiate with a doctor succeed. Your best bet: Offer to pay up front in cash.
Potential savings: $85 for a specialist consultation."

Health Grades Launches Prescription Drug Comparison Tool
NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--In an expansion of its online health-care ratings, Health Grades Inc. (HGRD) said Wednesday it is launching a new Web-based prescription drug information and ratings tool. HealthGrades.com will offer information on...

Does Your Medicine Make the Grade?
"Now HealthGrades, already an arbiter of hospitals and nursing homes, has launched a drug-rating service. Unlike some of the company's other offerings, ..."

Rage for Doctor Ratings Fraught With Uncertainty
"You might check some of the services that let patients grade their docs on the Internet now. Restaurant tipster Zagat got into the act with WellPoint in January for people covered by some of the insurance giant's plans. Or try searching HealthGrades..."

Smart ideas to make you healthier!
Give your hospital a check-up-in minutes
"A new survey found that patients who go to a top-quality facility are less likely to have post-op problems and are 28% more likely to recover completely from a major illness. To check up on a hospital-for free-go to www.healthgrades.com."

Web Sites Expand Rating Information on Nursing Homes
"...a number of Web sites focused on nursing homes in particular states are available, with some offering more in-depth information than the federal site.

• Medicare's database -- click on Compare Nursing Homes
• The federal data are also analyzed at memberofthefamily.net and healthgrades.com
• Recommendations from Consumers Union at consumerreports.org"

HealthGrades.com... the reports' quality findings are based on the same inspection data as the federal site, their information goes back longer and is summarized in an easy-to-understand form, says HealthGrades spokesman Scott Shapiro.

ABC News Interviews Dr. Samantha Collier
"Today, HealthGrades released a study, the 5th Annual HealthGrades Patient Safety in American Hospitals today and there were some pretty astounding findings there.

What we found in the study is that these medical errors are really quite costly to Americans in both lives and dollars. We found that looking at just Medicare patients (and this looked at 41 million Medicare hospitalizations) that there were 1.12 million medical errors or what we call patient safety incidents, and of those they were associated with 238,337 potentially preventable deaths; which all translates to about 8.8 billion dollars in preventable costs."

CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on new study
CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta reports on a new study on medical mistakes.
"More that one quarter of a million died of medical mistakes in the two year period 2005-2006. Many of those deaths could have been prevented.

We are hearing a lot more about medical mistakes than we used to. These numbers are higher than any reported numbers in the past. The Institute of Medicine studied this extensively about ten years ago and said there were 100,000 preventable deaths every year. This new report coming from HealthGrades says the number is about 2.5 times that at 250,000. A lot of people are paying attention now."

TODAY'S HEADLINES - Errors still costing Medicare billions: study
"Some 1.12 million patient-safety incidents occurred in 41 million hospitalizations among Medicare patients, costing the country's largest payer $8.8 billion between 2004 and 2006, according to a HealthGrades study.

Those incidents resulted in more than 238,000 potentially preventable deaths, according to the Golden, Colo.-based research company's study. This is HealthGrades' fifth annual Patient Safety in American Hospitals report. The study also noted some improvements: The all-cause mortality rate among Medicare patients who experienced a patient-safety incident decreased to 25.99% from 27.62% over the same period."

Go to the Hospital at Your Own Risk
"A good friend has started telling her husband, 'don't let them take me.'

So I'm not going to tell her that HealthGrades, a private company in Golden, Col., that rates hospitals, nursing homes and physicians found that from 2004 to 2006, medical errors at U.S. hospitals killed 270,491 people. And that's just Medicare patients.

The company analyzed 41 million Medicare records for those years, from almost all of the nearly 5,000 non-federal hospitals. It looked for 16 kinds of medical errors, ranging from pulmonary embolism or deep vein … and leaving a tool or anything else inside a surgical patient (enough said). It found 1.1 million mistakes in the three years studied. Do the math, and you'll see that about one-fifth of the mistakes were fatal."

Before Code Blue: Who's minding the patient?
"Between 2004 and 2006, failure to rescue claimed more than 188,000 lives, amounting to about 128 deaths for every 1,000 patients at risk of complications, according to the latest report from HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization.

That's far more than any other measure found in the new study, which detected 1.12 million safety problems during nearly 41 million hospital stays logged by the country's Medicare recipients. The mistakes, tracked in 16 areas, accounted for more than 238,000 preventable deaths over three years and an estimated $8.8 billion in unnecessary medical costs, the report showed."

Medical Errors Costing U.S. Billions
"This analysis of 41 million Medicare patient records, released April 8 by HealthGrades, a health care ratings organization, found that patients treated at top-performing hospitals were, on average, 43 percent less likely to experience one or more medical errors than patients at the poorest-performing hospitals.

The overall medical error rate was about 3 percent for all Medicare patients, which works out to about 1.1 million patient safety incidents during the three years included in the analysis."

Under the Knife
"Do your homework - It's not easy to bargain in a world where you have no idea what anything costs. But for years consumers looking for reliable medical-pricing information have found them selves in a black hole. Even today complex surgeries can be difficult to accurately estimate, and prices can vary widely from region to region or even hospital to hospital.

But the good news is, consumers now have access to reliable data. ...HealthGrades (www.healthgrades.com) offers cost reports for 56 individual medical procedures and 13 types of doctor's visits, customizable by region and even individual hospitals."

Online ratings irk doctors
"Considering a new doctor? Hoping to learn more about a doctor you already see? Or maybe you'd like to praise or pan one. You could do it the old-fashioned way and talk to friends and relatives or even the doctor in question. Or you could do this: Go online and read and respond (anonymously, if you like) to everything you find about that doctor, not only on basic search engines but on a growing list of websites that rate, rank and dissect the careers of physicians.

But the creators of such sites say they offer essential information. Some, including HealthGrades.com... include details on training, experience, certification and disciplinary history along with patient ratings. Some include information supplied by physicians: At HealthGrades.com, physicians can pay a fee to add details and even a video to their profiles..."

"See how well the patients fare. Your insurer might also track hospitals' mortality and complication rates on your procedure. These numbers are generally adjusted for the condition of the patient, so that a hospital isn't penalized for taking on tougher cases. Make sure your hospital's rates aren't worse than the average of all hospitals.

If your insurer's site doesn't carry the mortality data, you can turn to HealthGrades.com, which awards hospitals ratings for various procedures. These will show you the survival rates for patients while they are in the hospital and for up to six months after they've been discharged. Look for three stars or better."

Top 50 Hospitals in America
"Find out whether your hospital made HealthGrades' list of the nation's best. ABC Interviewed Dr. Mimi Hartker to find out how a hospital makes the list. Dr. Hartker explained, "HealthGrades studied approximately 100 million cases from 5,000 hospitals and named the 50 best hospitals in the U.S. These hospitals are in the top 1 percent and had an average death rate 27 percent lower than the national average. For these rankings, we look at clinical results for 27 procedures and conditions. To be named on the HealthGrades America's 50 Best Hospital list, the hospitals had to have elite scores every year of the study."

How Safe Are Our Hospitals?
"...HealthGrades is a quality review firm that ranks hospitals by their complication and mortality rates (adjusted for the health of the patient on admittance). According to HealthGrades, specialty hospitals don't always outpace traditional hospitals in quality of care, but they are overrepresented in the top tier.

America's Safest Hospitals - Of the nation's 8,000 hospitals, some are decidedly better than others at preventing potentially grave, unintended consequences of a hospital visit--infections, surgical errors, medication mishaps and the like. Forbes tapped HealthGrades, an independent health care rating agency, to provide a data on the nation's safest hospitals."

Five ways to find Dr. Right
"Even more important, there are loads of Web sites that keep objective information on doctors (sadly, these sites don't exist for dating!). Check on training and board certification at the American Medical Association. Find out if they're board certified in a particular specialty by clicking here. Several Web sites (such as RateMDs.com and HealthGrades.com) also have doctor ratings -- make sure you find out what criteria they use."

Top-Rated Hospitals Continue to Deliver Better Care
"Patients admitted to the top-rated hospitals in the United States have an average 27 percent lower risk of dying than patients admitted to other hospitals in the country, a new study shows."

It's never just one thing that leads to serious error
"It was the 1999 Institute of Medicine Report that shocked the country, and shamed the medical profession into voluntarily adopting systems changes. The report estimated that 100,000 patients died annually from preventable hospital errors - about the same as the yearly tally of deaths from motor vehicle accidents, breast cancer and AIDS combined.

...Sure enough, five years later, a review of Medicare records by the Denver-based healthcare ranking group HealthGrades found nearly twice as many deaths from preventable errors - up to 195,000 - in the country's healthcare facilities. The higher estimate was never published in a peer-reviewed journal and included deaths in settings other than hospitals, such as nursing homes."

"Grady Memorial Hospital is home to Atlanta's only emergency ambulance fleet. Years of financial cutbacks have left Grady Memorial Hospital with a below-average record on patient care issues, compared with other public hospitals nationwide. Here are some of the 13 safety indicators reflecting how well the hospital performed from 2003 to 2005. The patients affected figure shows how many per 1,000 experienced the problem. (Source: HealthGrades Inc.) The included chart shows HealthGrades' data on Grady Memorial Hospital's safety report card."

Find the Best Doc - Rating Systems for Doctors
"'Aren't there already Web sites out there that provide these types of ratings? Couldn't I look you up on the Internet and try to find out more about you, Dr. Gupta?'

'Yes, you could and people have already done that… There is a Web site HealthGrades that you can do that sort of thing. You go on there and type in your doctor's name to get a report. Some of these reports have a fee where you actually pay for them but some of them are free. You look up the types of procedures the person does and there is patient feedback'"

Resources - How to interrogate a doctor
What do you really need to ask your doctor during your limited time at an office visit? The December/January issue of Best Life offers some suggestions:
"...When did you graduate from medical school? Harvard Medical School researchers found that doctors who have been out of med school for more than 20 years are as much as 48 percent less likely to stay up to date on developments in their fields and also are unlikely to be aware of current treatment guidelines, such as prescribing aspirin to treat angina. If you don't want to ask, check the physician's graduation data at healthgrades.com..."

Rating Your Doctor
"Word of mouth has always played a big role in medicine. A doctor's reputation is constantly being shaped by conversations among current and potential patients...

Online services like HealthGrades.com already analyze public and private records on physicians, hospitals and nursing homes, providing a more detached look at how well they perform..."

UNITE YOUR MEDICAL TEAM: How to build a home base for health care.
"... WHERE TO CHECK UP ON PHYSICIANS
The following resources can provide background information on your current physician or one you are considering.

• HealthGrades (www.healthgrades.com) provides reports on doctors, at $29.95 each, that cover education and training, board certification, professional misconduct or disciplinary actions, and satisfaction scores from patients..."

Give your Doctor a Checkup
www.healthgrades.com - The 'research physician' feature at this for-profit site provides extremely thorough reports, including doctors' schooling and disciplinary-action history and ratings of local hospitals. Practically the only missing information on this site is which insurance plans a doctor accepts, something the site 'expects to have in the future,' says HealthGrades spokesman Scott Shapiro."

Smart Ways to Cut - Health Care Costs
"You can also try researching what other providers charge for the test or procedure you need and use that info for leverage. Say, for example, 'ABC Hospital charges X dollars for a standard screening mammogram. Can you match that?' For reliable ballpark figures, visit Healthgrades.com, which publishes average "list" prices charged by providers and negotiated prices paid by insurers for over 50 different procedures..."

Actor's Anguish: Quaid Twins' Overdose Highlights Potentially Deadly Effect of Hospital Errors?
"A troubling report that actor Dennis Quaid's newborn twins received a dangerous overdose of the blood-thinning drug Heparin highlights the many medical mistakes made in U.S. hospitals each year.

...A study from health care ratings company HealthGrades found there were more than 1.16 million safety incidents involving Medicare patients between 2003 and 2005. During that three-year period, there also were 247,662 potentially preventable deaths involving Medicare patients, the study found."

Medical Errors, Past and Present
"But due to the sheer number of medical procedures that take place in the country every year, even isolated incidents add up. A report last April by the independent health care-ratings company HealthGrades found through Medicare hospitalization records that nearly 3 percent of patients in the nation's hospitals risk experiencing hospital errors.

The report further suggested that those patients who experience an error in treatment or care at a hospital have a one in four chance of dying from the mistake. In total, HealthGrades said, 247,662 patients studied between 2003 and 2005 died from potentially preventable problems."

America's Top Hospitals Are Real Lifesavers
"MONDAY, Oct. 15 (HealthDay News) -- Patients in the top-ranked hospitals in the United States are 71 percent less likely to die than those in the lowest-rated hospitals, according to a new study from the health-care ratings company HealthGrades.

The 10th annual HealthGrades Hospital Quality in America Study looked at 41 million Medicare hospitalization records at 5,000 hospitals from 2004 to 2006.

The study authors contend that if all hospitals performed at the level of the top five-star rated hospitals, the lives of 266,604 Medicare patients could have been saved over those three years..."

Picking the right hospital can save your life
"Studies are now finding that not all hospitals are created equal for every medical emergency. Whether it's a stroke, a high-risk birth, or a heart attack, the research says it's worth doing whatever it takes to get to the right place. 'A lot of people think hospitals are all the same,' said Dr. Samantha Collier, chief medical officer at HealthGrades, which ranks hospitals. 'They're not.'

Sree Advice: Researching Hospitals Online
"Let's talk about HealthGrades. This is a Web site that has a lot of physician information but for that they charge you. Their hospital information is free. Let's go to healthgrades.com, they show you detailed information on hospitals by procedure or diagnosis…."

More experienced surgeons have lower recurrence of cancer in patients they have operated on
"Patients can find the most experienced surgeon a number of ways. There's lots of information about doctors available on Web sites, public sites run by states and Medicare, and private efforts like healthgrades.com, where Dr. Samantha Collier is the chief medical officer.

'What you want to find out is first of all, is your doc in good standing? Where'd they go to medical school, residency, and training? Are they board certified in their specialty', says Dr. Collier…."

A Guide to Quality Health Care - Picking the Right Doctor
"'HealthGrades is the leading health care ratings company in America. Our mission is to guide America to better health care by putting information out on hospitals, nursing homes and physicians to consumers at healthgrades.com.

'Patients really need to understand that there are potentially large differences, not just among the nation's hospitals, but also among physicians. That's why with all the new information coming out with the U.S. World Report, HealthGrades, and other sites, it's important to know this is information they should really do their homework'…

'Plan questions to ask when shopping for a new doctor by doing your homework,' says Doctor Samantha Collier, HealthGrades' chief medical officer. 'Ask yourself and your family what characteristics each would look for and formulate questions to ask the physician at the first interview.'"

How to Size Up Your Hospital
Improved Public Databases Let People Compare Practices and Outcomes; The Importance of Looking Past the Numbers
"A private company, Health Grades Inc. of Golden, Colo., also rates doctors and hospitals and provides information on a broader range of outcomes. The company's site -- www.healthgrades.com⁷ -- rates hospitals on 32 conditions and procedures, from appendectomies to heart-valve-replacement surgery. The site, which offers data on more than 5,000 hospitals, draws on Medicare billing data to calculate the rate of complications or deaths in the wake of each procedure, giving a star rating and specific percentages.

Much of the information is available free on the site, which is searchable by state, procedure and other criteria. Or, for $18, the group will provide more elaborate reports, including average-length-of-stay data and price comparisons...

Some insurers and large employers provide members and employees with access to reports from Health Grades… Don't stick with just one tool, says Samantha Collier, Health Grades' chief medical officer. 'Go to all the sites you can. See if you're getting similar data.'"

How to Find a Good Doctor
It's easier now as physicians provide more info and become more patient friendly. A key question to ask: How is the practice run?

“The company HealthGrades, for instance, collects public information such as education, gender and board certification about doctors around the country and, for 15 states, malpractice payments — and charges a fee for the report. HealthGrades spokesman Scott Shapiro says the company does not expect to offer information about practice design (such as computerization) in the near future.

But the reports do note whether a doctor has received a quality designation from a private quality organization called Bridges to Excellence, which offers doctors a review and assessment of how they handle specific diseases such as stroke and diabetes. In some places, these ratings can earn doctors financial reward from employers.”

Is There a (High-Quality) Doctor In the House?
"HealthGrades, a site visited by 3 million Americans each year, is another useful resource operated by a private company in Golden, Colo. The firm has been reporting hospital performance since 1998 using an analysis of publicly available Medicare data. HealthGrades scores every hospital in the country on a five-star system that takes into account outcome data and specific patient populations.

‘We take very, very complex information and we present it to consumers in a useful and friendly way,’ says Scott Shapiro, vice president of corporate communications and marketing for HealthGrades.

HealthGrades is currently one of the only services offering doctor quality reports. Users of this service can access basic information-medical education, board certifications, malpractice lawsuit history, and state sanction information-on 650,000 practicing physicians. To critics who complain that these variables don't provide an accurate assessment of a physician's competence, HealthGrades spokesperson Scott Shapiro says, ‘We provide a full professional portrait of a physician that includes many different data points.’ “

How do I get a booked, top doctor to see me quickly?
"'Do you really need the top dermatologist for a rash?' asks Dr. Samantha Collier, chief medical officer for Health Grades Inc., which ranks the quality of doctors, hospitals and nursing homes.’Reserve the top doctors for when you really have a potentially dangerous condition.'

Collier said to leave a message directly for the doctor and more times than not, the physician will return the call. Again, stress the severity of your problem and explain why it is important that he or she treat you."

Negotiate Your Medical Bills
"Scott Shapiro is a spokesman for HealthGrades; a Web site has pricing information from 80 insurers. 'In the past, consumers were really at a disadvantage; they didn't know what a procedure cost.' To find pricing, you can log onto a Web site like HealthGrades, says Stacey Bradford. 'This is the ammunition people need to ensure that they are paying what they should be paying,' continued Shapiro."

Night Shift Nightmare: After dark is prime time for hospital mistakes. How to protect yourself.
"There are many reasons to feel anxious when entering a hospital. In April, a HealthGrades study showed that some 248,000 patient deaths over a three-year period were preventable. What's less widely known, at least to the general public, is that mistakes tend to multiply on the night shift. You won't find it in any hospital brochure, but within the medical world, the dangers after dark are well known."

Transparency provides better look at health care
"Shopping around for a heart bypass operation?

If you are, you might be wondering about such things as the hospital's bypass-surgery death rate, how long you'll be in the hospital and how much the surgery costs.

...Some of the best-known hospital report cards are produced by private research firms. HealthGrades in Golden, Colo., uses government and other records to rate how patients fared after treatment-after adjusting for the severity of their illnesses, age and other factors. 'We don't just report the best (hospitals). We know people want to stay away from the worst,' says chief medical officer Samantha Collier."

How to Find a Good Doctor
Hire an Expert
“Health Grades Inc., based in Golden, Colo., offers reports combining licensing, medical training, board certification, recent state and federal disciplinary records and local hospital ratings, starting at about $18 per doctor. For an added fee, you can search medical-malpractice lawsuit settlements from some states. The reports include extras as well, including a list of issues to consider when picking a doctor."

Hospitals Check Their Charts
"Rankings Push Them to Improve Care - To find the best hospital in the Washington region, you may have to drive a bit.

You could go north - not to the famed Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore but to the Baltimore Washington Medical Center in Glen Burnie, MD. Or you could drive west, over the Blue Ridge to the Shenandoah Valley, where Winchester Medical Center is located.

...On the other hand, if you consult the Web site of a company called HealthGrades, you might head for two of Inova's hospitals, Alexandria and Fairfax, which boast five-star ratings in three clinical areas."

Fox News Housecall:
Why it's important to choose a good hospital when you are sick.
"....HealthGrades took the records of 40 million Medicare patients... and provides a list of hospitals with the lowest death rates for these 40 million people. They also analyzed what hospital you should go to for a particular condition to get treated, such as bypass surgery, cancer surgery, whatever. And you can look this up on the Internet if you have a computer, it is www.healthgrades.com. Remember, that if you can't find one of these good hospitals in your own community, you maybe should consider going to a neighboring community, or going somewhere else. But it is very important to check out the hospital first."

Health Watch
"A new study shows there's a big difference in successful care between the best hospitals and all the rest. Dr. Senay has details... The study was done by a company called HealthGrades, one of the leading independent rating companies for hospitals. They did it with data that's publicly available. It's Medicare admission data. They looked over a period from 2003 to 2005, 5,000 hospitals they analyzed, looking at 26 diagnoses and procedures. In the end they found only 5% of those 5,000 hospitals met what they characterized to be the highest quality."

"Surfing for Surgery. Like millions of Americans, Gary Garcia is shopping online, CBS News correspondent Wyatt Andrews reports. But he's not on eBay or Amazon.com. Garcia needs a new heart valve, and he's shopping for surgery. Using a Web site called HealthGrades.com, Garcia learns which nearby hospital is the best at heart surgery - and then, to his amazement, he gets an estimated breakdown of the costs. He gets the list price for his operation, the discounted price his insurance will pay and his estimated co-payment. 'I am looking for a combination of the price, the quality, the efficiency,' Garcia explains."

How Good is Your Doctor?
"The healthgrades.com site sells reports on doctors for $12.95 each... HealthGrades also incorporates consumer reviews into its reports, providing graphs that show how much other patients trust a physician and to what extent they would recommend the doctor to family and friends."

Negotiating Lower Healthcare Costs
Jean Chatzky: "These sorts of prices are becoming available as far as information is concerned to consumers - before we had no idea."
Al Roker: "How do you get that information?"
Chatzky: "You get it from a number of different sources. We got these from a company called HealthGrades; they're the largest provider of healthcare quality information. They've just started providing cost reports for 55 different procedures. They're $7.95, but hey, if you're going for a $55,000 surgery, what is $7.95?"

Avoiding Big Bills
"These days, health-care costs can be high even for the insured. A report released this week from Health Grades - a company that ranks hospitals - suggests you can bargain down your health care like the cost of a car."

Price Check
"People without health insurance and those with high-deductible policies often have strong incentives to weigh the cost of medical care. Starting this week, a Colorado company called HealthGrades is offering consumers price quotes for dozens of procedures, including cataract surgery, hysterectomy and the implanting of a pacemaker."

Company to Offer Picture of Medical Costs
"Beginning today, consumers can learn the cost of 42 medical procedures ranging from gastric bypass to cataract surgery through the website of HealthGrades.com, based in suburban Denver.

"If you've ever wondered how much health care truly costs, one company says it has the answer. But it'll cost you. For $7.95 and some patient information, HealthGrades Incorporated says it'll generate a report on expected out-of-pocket costs, average prices negotiated by insurers and the average amount charged by providers. You can get a report through the company's website, www.healthgrades.com ..."

Few New York City Hospitals Cited Among Best in Death-Risk Study "In fact, only seven hospitals statewide - and just two in the city - made the list of hospitals in the country where patients have the lowest risk of death or serious complications, according to a report to be released today. The study, by HealthGrades, a health care analysis firm, is in its fourth year, and each year has yielded disappointing results for New York."

"Yes, they are called elective C-sections when a woman chooses to have them but they are not medically necessary. According to the new report by the group HealthGrades, they have risen by 36% in a three-year period."

"One of the most common questions I get is how to pick a good Hospital? Tough question. We'll talk about it for a few minutes with Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs for HealthGrades. Let me begin by asking you to tell us about HealthGrades and how you go about grading hospitals?" "It's the leading healthcare grading company in the United States..."

Hunting for Hospitals that Measure Up
Health Grades (HGRD), based in Golden, Colo., offers detailed reports tracking performance in seven specialties from heart care to orthopedics at HealthGrades.com.

Medical Errors Edging Up in U.S., Study Finds
Hospital-acquired infections are worsening in the United States, even though the problem is widely recognized, according to a report issued on Monday. And the problem of such infections provides a good indication of which hospitals are prone to errors overall, the report, from Colorado-based Health Grades Inc, finds.

Saving Lives Shouldn't Be This Hard
"To get the real scoop on a hospital in a form you can understand, you need only 10 bucks and two words: HealthGrades.com. The Colorado consulting firm rates hospitals using a quantitative formula based on results of Medicare cases. From orthopedics to heart disease, their ratings break down hospitals' practices in detail and reduce things to simple star ratings you can decipher even when you're in pain and your head is spinning. Very basic info is free, and a long summary of a hospital costs $9.95. In a hospital, an aspirin seems to cost three times that. Next time, I'll demand any hospital that wants my business give me their HealthGrades scorecard."

The Informed Patient
"How would you rate the care you received during your last doctor's visit or hospital stay? ... Among the most ambitious efforts is a plan to be announced today by health-care ratings company Health Grades Inc. for a national launch of CompareYourCare, an interactive Web site. The site was developed by the nonprofit health quality group Foundation for Accountability, or FAACT."

"Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg praised the city's public hospitals yesterday, asserting that the quality of care they provide is so good that poor New Yorkers receive better medical service than wealthy patients at private hospitals. … Another Web-based rating service, Health Grades, uses Medicare and Medicaid data to generate reports on doctors and hospitals, available for a fee. Its reports on the 11 city-operated hospitals are a mixed bag, with many of them faring well in some areas and poorly in others. Health Grades cited three New York hospitals, none city-operated, for overall clinical excellence last year: New York Presbyterian Hospital and Beth Israel Medical Center, both in Manhattan, and Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn."

"The Problem: How does your doctor or hospital stack up to the competition? ... Some companies, such as Health Grades Inc. (www.healthgrades.com), provide doctor ratings directly to consumers for a nominal charge."

"The current system fails to spur health care providers to 'identify, compensate (for) and reduce errors' because they fear lawsuits, according to a study released in 2002 by the Institute of Medicine, a federal advisory group. It estimated that medical errors result in more than 44,000 deaths a year. A new study by HealthGrades, a health care rating organization, said errors caused 195,000 deaths, on average, in 2000, 2001 and 2002."

"According to HealthGrades, the health-care-rating organization that conducted the study, needless deaths averaged 195,000 a year in 2000, 2001, and 2002. 'That's the equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people dying each year,' says Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs."

"A new survey of data from 50 states concluded that medical errors are killing 195,000 people a year in American hospitals - double the previous estimate. HealthGrades, a private company that rates hospitals for insurers and health plans, said that if hospital errors were included on the nation's list of the leading causes of death, they would show up as No. 6 - ahead of diabetes, pneumonia and Alzheimer's."

"As many as 195,000 people a year could be dying in U.S. hospitals because of easily prevented errors, a company said on Tuesday in an estimate that doubles previous figures. Lakewood, Colorado-based HealthGrades Inc. said its data covers all 50 states and is more up-to-date than a 1999 study from the Institute of Medicine that said 98,000 people a year die from medical errors."

"The study by Health Grades Inc., a health-care consulting firm in Colorado that rates hospitals, estimated that medical errors in U.S. hospitals contributed to almost 600,000 patient deaths over the past three years, double the number if deaths from a study published in 2000 by the Institute of Medicine."

"'There is little evidence that patient safety has improved in the last five years,' said Dr. Samantha Collier, vice president of medical affairs at HealthGrades, which publishes rankings of hospitals and doctors. 'The equivalent of 390 jumbo jets full of people are dying each year due to likely preventable, in-hospital medical errors, making this one of the leading killers in the US.'"

"And then there's HealthGrades, which has branched out from providing hospital data to offer profiles on some 650,000 doctors. When Jeff Burger, of Mason City, Iowa, was trying to persuade his mother to undergo a bypass at a hospital near his home, he says he used the site to check the medical-school credentials of the doctors there. The news seemed to calm her. 'Mom was pleased to see the surgeons out here in the sticks had gone to tony East Coast schools,' he recalls … HealthGrades has begun upgrading its offering by turning patients' subjective impressions about doctors into 'physician-patient experience tool.'"

"My first tip today, you have got to get the skinny on doctors. You know, it used to be that you could only ask maybe office mates, friends for a doctor's name. Not any more. Here's the good news. There are lots of great Web sites you can go to. One of them, healthgrades.com, there you can find out - everything out from education, training, board certification. The really good news, you can sort these names by specialty and even location. So, it's a great Web site."

"Specialists in obstetrics say the trend toward elective C-sections or C-sections on demand is small but growing, with such planned surgical deliveries having increased by 20 percent in both the United States and Massachusetts between 1999 and 2001, and even more since then. According to HealthGrades, a research group, just under 2 percent of all births in Massachusetts in 2001 were elective C-sections."

"That's the thinking behind the following list of the best hospitals for 20 common medical conditions, compiled with the help of HealthGrades, a firm that uses Medicare mortality and complication data to rate hospitals. On the assumption that you may be willing to travel for excellent medical care but prefer staying somewhat close to home, we asked Sarah Loughran and Dr. Samantha Collier of HealthGrades to provide the names of top hospitals in each of five regions."

Katie Couric: You also say research hospitals, find out how many times they've performed a particular type of surgery and what their success rate is and complications … How do you do that research, though?
Dr. Dumas: You know, there's a Web site called HealthGrades.com that you can go to. We talk about it in our book. And it'll tell you, just like a restaurant, five star, three star, one star. This could save your life.

"Health Grades Inc., which measures performance using Medicare data, examined Wichita's hospitals and found that Kansas Heart Hospital had lower, risk-adjusted in-hospital mortality rates for five different cardiac procedures than Via Christi Regional Medical Center, a general acute care hospital."

"More women are choosing to have Caesarean sections instead of vaginal births, according to a report released Monday, and their decisions, together with doctors' cooperation, has become a contentious subject among obstetricians, politicians and feminists. The report is the first of its kind by Health Grades Inc., a consultant and research group, which evaluated data from 2,000 hospitals in 18 states. The study found that 1.56 percent of deliveries in those states were "patient choice" C-sections in 1999. In 2001, 1.87 percent were elective procedures."

"More Moms Opt to Undergo C-Section Births, Study Finds … HealthGrades released the patient-choice cesarean data in conjunction with its new 2003 Hospital Quality Ratings for Obstetric Services for nearly 2,000 hospitals. The free information is available at www.healthgrades.com."

"Twelve steps to handle a disturbing diagnosis … #8. Choose Your Hospital Wisely. The closest hospital may be convenient, but it's probably a poor choice unless its staff has a great deal of experience in treating patients in your situation. You can get a quick read on this by checking www.healthgrades.com..."

"At the end of the day you will end up with a few really strong report card organizations that consumers think about going to," says Salber. Leapfrog, NCQA and Health Grades, among others make up that list, she says.

"A Colorado-based healthcare company called HealthGrades at www.healthgrades.com is the only consumer-oriented source for data on 5,000 hospitals nationwide and the surgical and hospital procedures they perform... It's clear from this year's data that making an informed choice can be a matter of life and death."

"'You can certainly find more information on a car you are considering buying, where you might be going to dinner, the appliance that you are interested in purchasing, as opposed to who's going to perform your surgery and where that surgery is going to be performed,' says Kerry Hicks, who works at HealthGrades."

"... The free www.healthgrades.com draws on the Medicare data about fatality rates and the percentage of procedures with poor results. They also [display] a new quality measure known as Leapfrog, which judges hospitals based on whether or not they use a computer system that can check for errors when patient drug orders are entered, whether they have appropriate specialists available for their intensive care units, and whether they perform a minimum number of certain procedures."

"The HealthGrades site, www.healthgrades.com, led Edward Deitzel, of Rising Sun, Md., to Northshore Regional Hospital in the New Orleans suburb of Slidell. The 57-year-old retiree says he suffered complications after undergoing a quadruple coronary bypass at a Delaware hospital. So he began looking for another heart surgeon and heard about one named John Breaux in Louisiana. Then Mr. Deitzel's sister-in-law, 'surfing the Internet,' he says, discovered that Northshore Regional, where Dr. Breaux had an affiliation, had received a five-star rating from HealthGrades. 'I got into my car and drove to Louisiana,' says Mr. Deitzel."

"HealthGrades offers 1, 3, and 5-star ratings for hospitals by procedure, as well as the volume of procedures performed in the hospital. When looking at procedure volume, the idea is that the higher the volume, the better the outcome of the procedure.

HealthGrades also allows the prospective patient to view the mortality percentages as a result of complications from the procedure. The patient can then compare and choose from hospitals in their chosen area based on this information."