Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reports has created a hospital ratings service.  The service rates about 3,000 facilities and aims to provide consumers with more data needed for choosing where to get their health care.

Many health care providers use patient records to send fundraising appeals to patients.  Often times the permission is in the forms a patient signs when getting care.  An article in yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle discusses fundraising and privacy, revealing that a number of patients are upset about the practice.

Search giant Google publicly released its Google Health service.  The offering allows consumers to manage some health records online.  The product has been anticipated for several years.

Health & Human Services is spending millions of dollars on an ad campaign to promote its HospitalCompare website.  The ads will feature survey results from selected organizations and various versions will run in markets throughout the country.

TheHill.com has posted an interview with Mike Leavitt, Health and Human Services Secretary.  Leavitt talks about several topics, including a new Medicare demonstration project involving small physician practices, the implementation and spread of electronic health records, and the benefits of increasing interoperability standards.

Kaiser Permanente announced on Monday that it has completed the distribution of its outpatient electronic health record (EHR).  The deployment first began in 2004 and concluded this month.