The Hospital Compare website was released to the public today with updated features:

CMS is adding information about the number of certain elective hospital procedures provided to those patients and what Medicare pays for those services. For the first time, consumers have the three critical elements -- quality information, patient satisfaction survey information, and pricing information for specific procedures -- they need to make effective decisions about the quality and value of the health care available to them through local hospitals.

“By enhancing these resources, Medicare is strengthening its commitment to use the transparency of quality information to help give consumers more choice about the quality of their health care and how they may be able to lower their health care costs,” HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt said. “To achieve goals around providing consumers with the information necessary, and the incentive, to choose hospitals based on quality and value, HHS is continuing work with partners such as the Hospital Quality Alliance to drive quality up and the cost down.”

The Hospital Compare Web site currently provides information on 26 quality measures, which include process of care and outcome measures. Process of care measures report how well a hospital provides care and outcome measures reflect the results of the care that beneficiaries received while in the hospital. With the addition of the 10 new patient experience of care topics, consumers will now be able to get a better picture of the quality of care delivered at their local hospitals.

The website offers consumers the ability to examine and compare experiences and ratings between healthcare organizations. This transparency is something that Becky Cherney of the Florida Health Care Coalition recently said is increasingly something consumers are looking for. At a Health Care Symposium in Central Florida, she said "Consumers want to know". CMS acknowledges this trend in its release:

“Medicare beneficiaries tell us that just like the information they receive about other products and services they consume, they want to know what their neighbors are saying about the care they received while in the hospital; they want to know how much it costs; and they want to know about the quality of that care. We are now sharing that information,” said CMS Acting Administrator Kerry Weems. “The nation’s hospitals and others who work with patients share our goal of improving the quality of care for all. Our quality improvement efforts include a wide-ranging set of tools and data to do just that.”

The patient experience of care information on Hospital Compare is part of the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) Hospital Survey, know as HCAHPS. HCAHPS is the first national, standardized, publicly reported survey of patient perspectives on care they experience during a hospital stay. More than 2,500 hospitals around the country have been collecting information from a random sample of discharged patients who were treated for a wide range of conditions between October 2006 and June 2007. These patients were asked about their experiences of care (including topics such as responsiveness of hospital staff and pain management) and how they rate the hospital overall. CMS worked with the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) and with support from members of the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA) to develop the HCAHPS survey.

The full press release can be read at the CMS website.