The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has launched a national print advertising campaign to promote Hospital Compare, its hospital quality reporting web site. The web site provides scores on 26 quality and patient satisfaction measures for almost 4,000 U.S. hospitals. The ads, which appeared May 21 in 58 major daily newspapers, invite readers to “Compare the Quality of Your Local Hospitals.” The ads highlight two quality measures for hospitals in the newspapers’ market: the percentage of patients at each hospital who always received help when they requested it, and the percentage of patients at each hospital who were given antibiotics one hour prior to surgery. The ads also give the state average for the two measures.
Hospital Compare enables consumers to comparison shop for a hospital. “These ads--and Hospital Compare--are intended to give consumers more information about making choices about their health care,” said HHS Secretary Mike Leavitt. “This brings us closer to meeting the goal of using new technologies to make the quality of healthcare services all across the nation more transparent to the public.” For more information, read CMS’s press release announcing its ad campaign, or go to the Hospital Compare web site.
