Company Information

HealthGrades is America’s most trusted source for researching and selecting physicians and hospitals. Used by more than 100 million people a year, HealthGrades has redefined how patients search, evaluate, compare and establish sustained relationships with health care providers. By providing in-depth information on hospital quality, comprehensive physician data, and access to the most respected health content, HealthGrades delivers solutions along every step of the patient continuum. Founded in 1999, the firm is headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and has over 250 employees.

• Professional Services Delivery Team helps the nation's top-performing hospitals build and maintain a reputation for excellence and compete on the basis of quality. This team has proven successful in increasing patient volume and market share, and bolstering staff recruitment and retention for the company's more than 350 hospital partners.
• Accelerated Clinical Excellence (ACE) Team works with clinical staff and physicians to identify areas of quality improvement for hospitals and offers them a suite of tools and services to enhance their quality of care.
• Patient Direct Connect™ is an all-new patient acquisition channel that enables your hospital to engage and promote your physicians, while adding your HealthGrades quality messaging to online physician profiles.

We rate or profile:

• 5,000 hospitals according to specialty, such as cardiac surgery, cardiology, orthopedic surgery, pulmonary/respiratory, vascular surgery, bariatric surgery, obstetrics, gynecology and women's health. (bariatric, obstetrics, gynecologic and women's health information is available for several states that make it publicly available.) We also rate several individual procedures and diagnoses, such as prostate, cholecystectomy, treatment of sepsis, bowel obstruction, and GI bleed.
• 750,000 physicians in over 100 specialties
• 16,000 nursing homes

We assembled a team of health care information and analysis experts, including Susan DesHarnais, Ph.D., to develop the company's objective ratings. Dr. DesHarnais has spent more than 16 years developing methods and publishing articles on risk-adjusting healthcare outcomes data.

We compile outcomes data from dozens of independent public and private sources and translate it into easily understandable, objective report card ratings on providers. For hospitals, the company utilizes advanced information management and statistical techniques to process and risk-adjust a large volume of patient level data. We risk-adjust the data in order to make valid and accurate comparisons between providers, taking into account that the demographic characteristics of patients and the severity of patients' illnesses may vary at different locations. For example, this levels the playing field between hospitals that treat sicker patients vs. those that treat healthier patients.

Our hospital ratings use data from the most current three-year data set available from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and several individual states (those that make the data available) in order to provide meaningful ratings. Our nursing home ratings use data provided by CMS in the Online Survey Certification and Reporting database and are based on current, past and repeating deficiencies found during on-site inspection surveys.

We compile data from dozens of independent private and public sources, including:

• Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
• 19 states' records of all payer data
• 50 states' medical board records
• Publicly available directories

• Hospital data is updated annually.
• Physician data is updated quarterly.

HealthGrades' annual studies of hospital quality and patient safety are the most comprehensive of their kind and are regularly profiled in the media, including the following news outlets:

• The Today Show
• CNN
• Business Week
• Newsweek
• Time
• USA Today
• Washington Post
• The Wall Street Journal
• The New York Times
• Associated Press
• Reuters
• Boston Globe

Consumers can find free hospital information on our site, including how we rated them and if they received our Clinical Excellence or Patient Safety awards.

Additionally, HealthGrades offers physician profiles on nearly every practicing physician in the country as well as nursing home ratings.

All of the above are accessed through www.healthgrades.com/consumer.

Hospitals, providers, and patients turn to HealthGrades so they can make informed decisions concerning quality health care.

• Patients: Visitors of HealthGrades.com find quality ratings and cost information for the nation’s 5,000 hospitals and 16,000 nursing homes as well as in-depth profiles of the nation’s 750,000 physicians. As a leader in the consumer revolution in health care, HealthGrades receives more than 11 million unique visitors to its consumer websites each month.

• Physicians and Providers: HealthGrades’ Physician & Provider portal is a web-based tool that empowers physicians and practice administrators to take control of their online reputation. This free, secure web application encourages ongoing physician engagement to verify and modify the information HealthGrades makes public on the physician profiles.

• Hospitals: HealthGrades helps hospitals understand, improve, and communicate the quality of care they deliver through a suite of products and physician-led clinical advisory services. HealthGrades currently works with hospitals nationwide and produces well-respected public studies of hospital quality in areas that include clinical excellence and patient safety.