Welcome to MyHealthCompare

MyHealthCompare is a free website that lets you rank and compare over 4400 US hospitals based on the quality of care they deliver and the level of satisfaction that patients experience.

The data used to rank the hospitals comes directly from The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS). CMS makes this data available on their website. However, without a healthcare background, it is hard to use and interpret the information on their site.

Why Use MyHealthCompare?

Because it’s easy to use. For a basic search, you just enter your city and state or your zip code. MyHealthCompare ranks the hospitals in your area based on their “Overall Performance” -- a roll-up score of the 43 individual performance measures available on each hospital.

The higher the Overall Performance, the more likely it is that you will get great care.

MyHealthCompare makes it simple to get even more detail about each hospital and gives you a side by side comparison on their patient satisfaction and quality of care for heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, asthma, and surgery.

Use MyHealthCompare. Make good choices. Get the care you deserve.

The scores in MyHealthCompare reflects the September 2009 data available in www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

Background

Over 4400 hospitals voluntarily submit data their performance data clinical and patient satisfaction measures. In addition, CMS uses claim-based data to calculate outcome and readmission results. In total, there are up to 43 separate measures of clinical quality and satisfaction that are available on each hospital. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) makes this data available on www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.

Measures

There are 27 clinical measures that focus on:

1. Surgery Care (7 measures)
2. Cardiac Care (11 measures)
3. Pneumonia Care (7 measures)
4. Children's Asthma Care (2 measures)

There are 6 outcome measures:

1. Heart Attack: Percentage Not Readmitted and Survival Rates
2. Heart Failure: Percentage Not Readmitted and Survival Rates
3. Pneumonia: Percentage Not Readmitted and Survival Rates

In addition, there are 10 patient satisfaction measures that are collected through the CAHPS® Hospital Survey

Methodology

Overall Care Scores and Rankings

Overall Care scores are only calculated for hospitals submitting data for at least 26 (79%) of the clinical measures.

The Overall Care score is a composite score calculated by averaging all the individual scores, clinical and satisfaction, submitted by a hospital. This is different than the composite scores developed by other organizations that exclude patient satisfaction data from the calculation.

While some hospitals submitted enough data to be included in the Overall Care scoring, they did not submit CAHPS scores. These hospitals are noted with an asterick (*) by their name.

The Overall Care rankings reflect the Overall Care score. Hospitals with the same performance score are listed and ranked alphabetically.

Hospitals with data on less than 26 measures do not have an Overall Care score and are not included in the Overall Ranking methodology. However, these hospitals are listed alphabetically (but without a score) underneath the ranked hospitals when their location matches the search criteria.

Categories of Care Scores and Rankings

Performance scores for each category of care are calculated by averaging the individual scores for the measures included in that category.

Cardiac Care scores average the scores measures for both heart attack care and heart failure care and outcome measures.

Patient satisfaction scores reflect the average of a hospital’s “top box” performance. For Yes/No questions, the “Yes” response was used in the calculation. For questions where response choices are “ Always, Sometimes or Never,” only the “Always” response was used in the calculation.

Hospital rankings for specific categories of care reflect the performance score in that category. Hospitals with the same performance score are listed and ranked alphabetically.

All hospitals submitting data for specific categories of care are included in the individual categories even if they did not submit enough data to receive an Overall Care score.

For questions and comments regarding the methodology used in MyHealthCompare, you can contact us at Comments@myhealthcompare.com

It's Easy To Do A Basic Search

Step 1: Enter your city and state, or just your zip code, into the search box. You can also search for a specific hospital.

Step 2: Click on “Search Now.” MyHealthCompare identifies all the hospitals meeting your search criteria. They are ranked based on their “Overall Performance” which is the % score underneath each hospital’s name.

The higher the score, the better.

Step 3: MyHealthCompare also ranks and gives you scores of all the hospitals:

• In the state
• In the region
• In the nation

To Compare Hospitals In More Detail

Step 4: Compare up to 3 hospitals by selecting “compare this hospital” located next to the name of each hospital. A pop-up box will appear listing the hospitals you have chosen.

Click to view the reports. MyHealthCompare provides the average composite performance score for each hospital in specific categories of care and patient satisfaction.

Step 5: Click the arrow next to each category to see hospitals’ performance on the 43 individual quality and satisfaction measures that are used as the basis of the performance rankings in MyHealthCompare.