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Hospital Quality Initiative

The Hospital Quality Initiative uses a variety of tools to help stimulate and support improvements in the quality of care delivered by hospitals. The intent is to help improve hospitals' quality of care by distributing objective, easy to understand data on hospital performance. This will encourage consumers and their physicians to discuss and make more informed decisions on how to get the best hospital care, create incentives for hospitals to improve care, and support public accountability.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is working in conjunction with the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA), a public-private collaboration on hospital measurement and reporting. This collaboration includes the American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, and is supported by other organizations.

An important element of the collaboration is Hospital Compare, a web resource developed to publicly report credible and user-friendly information about the quality of care delivered in the nation’s hospitals. The hospital quality information is available by visiting www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov or www.medicare.gov and selecting Compare Hospitals in Your Area, or by calling 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227). Either way, consumers get the information they need to help them make more informed decisions. The twenty two quality measures currently reported on Hospital Compare reflect recommended treatments for four common conditions—heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection.

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The links below offer more information about the Hospital Quality Initiative: