Why do we need a Health Ratings Center?

At Consumer Reports we've been rating health products and services for over 70 years including treadmills, supplements, HMOs and gyms. More recently we've added Treatment Ratings for hundreds of conditions, Best Buy Drugs and Natural Medicine Ratings.

Health is part of our mission and because the health marketplace is complicated it often serves up differing opinions about what choices are best. To help you make decisions, you need clear information that’s free of advertising, conflicts of interest and other types of bias. With big money behind virtually every aspect of your health care, you need no-nonsense and trustworthy information to help you be a savvy health care consumer and to help you communicate more effectively with your doctor.

That's why we've created the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. The Health Ratings Center will collaborate with top researchers and world-class experts on topics ranging from hospital safety and quality to maternity care and prevention. With these experts, the Center will analyze and assess data and information, then present it in a visual rating or comparison you can use when making important health care decisions.

The first project for The Health Ratings Center is a web tool based on the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care data on the inpatient care of patients with severe chronic illnesses. As I've written about before, more treatment isn’t always the best option, and this tool allows you to compare how much care you’ll get at hospitals where you live.

These ratings are an essential part of our work here at Consumer Reports that no other organization can give you. We take no advertising and only work with individuals, information sources and organizations that meet our high standards. That’s because our only motive is to help you, our reader, get better care and make the best decisions you can not only for yourself but also for those you care about.

The Health Ratings Center is in its early days and we'd like to hear from you. What would you find helpful? What decisions are you facing? What would you like to see from us? Get in touch and know that you'll be hearing much more from us in the coming months.

—John Santa, MD, MPH, Director, Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center

Read Dr. Santa's response to your questions on the Health Ratings Center.

Comments

[Nik Kulkarni]

Mr. Santa, just wanted to give you my congratulations on your new position at Consumer Reports. I look forward to reading more from you.

[Vickie Holthaus]

I visited your site which delineates the rank order of services/cost of care by the region and state that our community hospital resides. Our facility, Pana Community Hospital, in Pana, IL is not represented and am curious as to why it was not included in the release. Please reply with an explanation of why some hospitals are excluded from your release.

Thank-you,
Vickie Holthaus

[Trisha Brandon]

Hi Vicky and thanks for your question. See below a segment from the data FAQs on why not all hospitals are listed:

Some small hospitals had so few deaths during the study period that the Atlas statisticians could not calculate reliable measures. The Atlas also excluded Veterans Administration hospitals and hospitals in other countries where Medicare recipients died. In addition, Medicare patients who are enrolled in an HMO are not included in the analysis, therefore a hospital that has only HMO patients (such as hospitals run by Kaiser) will not be listed. Medicare pays a fixed annual amount per enrollee and the HMOs do not submit individual claims to Medicare. If your hospital is neither small, foreign, a VA hospital or an HMO, it is possible it's listed under a different "hospital referral region" in your state from the one you originally checked.

See all FAQs here:
http://www.consumerreports.org/health/about/our-health-ratings.htm#comparehospitals

-Trisha Brandon, online editor

[Stan Kirk]

Dr. Santa,

I appreciate what Consumer Reports is trying to do in providing people more info as it relates to health care. You're doing a great job at evaluating pharmacy service, and are making a start on evaluating hospitals. However, what people really need more than anything is a service that evaluates DOCTORS. For example, let's say I have a shoulder problem. I don't care about the hospital nor the pharmacy nearly as much as I care about the orthopedist. I want the best shoulder guy in my area. Even more specifically, if the shoulder requires surgery, I'd like to know who the best surgeon would be for my particular type of shoulder surgery. Does Consumer Reports have any plans to rate doctors, like you do pharmacies, hospitals, cars, electronics, etc? If so, you would start a new day in medicine in America.

[Stan Kirk]

Dr. Santa,

I appreciate what Consumer Reports is trying to do in providing people more info as it relates to health care. You're doing a great job at evaluating pharmacy service, and are making a start on evaluating hospitals. However, what people really need more than anything is a service that evaluates DOCTORS. For example, let's say I have a shoulder problem. I don't care about the hospital nor the pharmacy nearly as much as I care about the orthopedist. I want the best shoulder guy in my area. Even more specifically, if the shoulder requires surgery, I'd like to know who the best surgeon would be for my particular type of shoulder surgery. Does Consumer Reports have any plans to rate doctors, like you do pharmacies, hospitals, cars, electronics, etc? If so, you would start a new day in medicine in America.

[Wayne Ono]

Dr. Santa

I took a chance looking onto the Consummer Report site for some guidance to health advice. I was pleasantly surprised to find this blog, and also the "Natural Medicine" database. When I last went not to my physician's office, I asked him, how I could parse the legitimate advice offered in these medical newsletters from that of somebody just trying to sell me something. I was especially interested in the fact that I am being bombarded with requests to subscribe to "medical breakthroughs" newlsletters, or "medical secrets" newsletters," with claims of explaining things that my doctor(s), wouldn't have the time or inclination to explain to me, good intentions or not.

I'm curious if you plan on looking into some of these leading medical newsletters, floating around, especially some of the "natural medicine," types that are touting alternative cures. I would really like to know what percentage of creditability, we should allow these, presumably well intentioned publications, as some of the "doctor's," names appear to be well respected (eg.,Weill, Mehmet Oz, David Wiliams, etc.).

[John Sigsbury]

I had a difficult time find the period of time used to compare hospital performance. When I went to the Dartmouth site it appeared that they used 2005 data to draw their conclusions. Is 2005 data useful in 2008? What other data elements will you be considering when evaluating hospital performance?

[JAMES]

well i think data is very useful,wether it is a past data aur present data it alwayz work for you in diffucult situation,that's why people want to collects data.

[JAMES]

I am glad to post my views and points in this blog, but I must say that webmaster of this blog has done a very great job to make his blog more informative and more discussable but unfortunately everything is same here that more than 80% in this and other blogs post their comments for making spam!!!, so i will really all this spam links to google band tool, because webmaster makes blogs for making discuss and for sloving each other problems.
thanks

[Ben]

I find it disappointing that you have moved content which used to be under the Consumer Reports membership into this "extra" CRH category.

For example, Treadmill data is now behind another subscription wall. I enjoying supporting ConsumerReports.org, but why remove value from it? I am disappointed.

[Ginger Skinner]

Hi Ben:

We actually have not removed the content for treadmills from ConsumerReports.org. In fact, if you go to ConsumerReports.org, and type the keyword "treadmills" in the search engine, you will see that the reports and ratings are still available to you.

Thank you for your continued support, and I hope this clears up this matter for you.

Best,
Ginger Skinner
Web Content Associate
ConsumerReportsHealth.org

[Tiger balm]

I visited your site, and i just would like to say you thank you for your article, very interesting.
For me it's a good idea and we need in many place Health Ratings Center.
Regards
Chris

[Jim Watkins]

Yes Consumer Reports Health.org will do a great job...but how about doctor evaluations.

I live in Bellingham, Washington a town that seems to have more than its share of bad doctors...I have had two doctors who have lost their license's to practice.

I had a brain surgery twenty years ago by a local neurosurgeon who told me that he had done the new procedure plenty of times.

I just got sent some medical records from Virgina Mason Hospital in Seattle, in those records was a hand written letter on my old nerousurgeons' stationary.

He had sent it to a fellow nerousurgeon in Seattle asking for advice on how to do the operation since he had never perfomed this operation before.

This doctor was the fomer Chief of Staff of the local Hospital...is this the type of doctors we deserve?

I told an other medical provider about this just recently...He told me not to repeat this to other medical providers in the area...or I would fine it hard to get a follow up appointment with any. He says that the medical professionals will roll up the wagons and protect their own.

We need to have a ratings of medical provider's that is not compromised by medical association's or government bureaucy.