How Hospitals Treat Women

While I think any tool a health care consumer can use that helps them make decisions is helpful, I would advise people to be slightly wary of these sites and ratings. I worked at a hospital in NJ for more than five years. I can tell you that while HealthGrades does rate hospitals based on real, factual data, there is a catch -- if a hospital is ranked (for example) at 5 stars, and wants to be recognized as such, the price is a hefty one... $20,000.

So keep in mind that while ratings companies such as HealthGrades do use real data, they also are corporate and interested in making a great deal of money. I would prefer data from an organization with less monetary motivation, and more motivation from just caring about the health care consumer (or at the least, one that is abiding by data reporting requirements). For example, in New Jersey, you can get very reliable information from the New Jersey Hospital Association's web site on both care, as well as price:

http://www.njhospitalcarecompare.com/

http://www.njhospitalpricecompare.com/

Women's Heart Health

It is good to see a report analyzing heart care for women because there are clearly gaps between the sexes in treating that family of diseases. Worst yet, even when hospitals adopt best practices and qualify as "best," women often still fare more poorly because researchers have not sufficiently studied heart disease in women as the below report shows, outlining 10 unanswered questions related to the development, diagnosis and treatment of heart disease in women:

"The 10 Q Report: Advancing Women’s Heart Health Through Improved Research, Diagnosis and Treatment"

http://www.womenshealthresearch.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5745&news_iv_ctrl=0&abbr=press_

User Friendly

"I've had a problem with the HealthGrades rating system from the beginning in 1999, when it gave hospitals a full range of one to five stars, and even more of one when they moved to a three-tier setup. It's definitely consumer-friendly, but my feeling is that it's far too blunt an instrument. Is this a fair judgment?"

For the highly versed consumer or professional, I completely agree that the star rating maybe too "blunt". However, to the average consumer it is an easy way to quickly identify "good" hospitals. For me, I like to see comprehensive statistics on key metrics (like citehealth.com shows). Also, more and more we are seeing an uptick in websites that offer user ratings on hospitals which opens up an whole other bag of worms.