But how much do you know about the critical care that your local hospital provides?
Now there's an online tool called Hospital Compare that tells you:
- Which critical care treatments are recommended for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia
- How often local hospitals provide the recommended critical care treatments that could get the best results for most patients
Easy to Use Guide to Critical Care
Hospital Compare is easy to use and allows you to choose just the critical care information you want to receive.
- You can search for hospitals by city, county or state, or by the hospital name.
- Once you choose the information you want, the tool shows you the recommended types and levels of critical care for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia.
- You'll also see how well your local hospital provides recommended critical care for these illnesses, and how your local hospital ranks when measured against other hospitals when it comes to providing critical care.
Not all hospitals may be listed; this tool only includes hospitals that agree to submit data on the quality of certain critical care services they provide for certain conditions.
Get Better Critical Care from Your Hospital
This information is designed to help you, your health care provider, family, and friends compare the quality of critical care provided in acute-care hospitals (general hospitals) and critical access hospitals (small, remote hospitals).
By helping you to know which hospitals in your area provide the best critical care, Hospital Compare can help you make better decisions about your health care. The program also encourages hospitals to improve the quality of critical care services that they provide.
Hospital Compare is a service from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Hospital Quality Alliance, a public-private collaboration established to promote reporting on hospital quality of care.
To access Hospital Compare, click here.
Note: Quality of critical care information is only provided for hospitals that treat adult patients for heart attack, heart failure, or pneumonia, so children's, psychiatric, rehabilitation or long-term care hospitals are not included.
