Use Medicare’s Hospital Compare Tool to Your Advantage

Not all hospitals are created equal. Unfortunately, patients don’t always know which hospitals in their area have good reputations, and which ones are regarded less favorably. This can be especially problematic if you’ve just relocated to a new place and aren’t familiar with the local healthcare facilities.

Fortunately, Medicare has created a tool to help people compare the hospitals in their area based on a number of important factors. Users can either search for hospitals by region, or search for specific hospitals that they might be curious about.  Metrics that influence each hospital’s rating include patient surveys, complication rates, quality of care and readmission rates. The tool also provides useful information about what services and procedures each hospital offers.

You can even select multiple hospitals (up to 3), and the website will generate a side-by-side comparison of their ratings and services. If you want to be prepared for an emergency, the ability to directly compare the hospitals in your area against one another can be downright invaluable.

We tried the tool out for ourselves, searching for the zip code of our office in Brooklyn. According to Medicare, some of the best hospitals in our area include the Hospital for Special Surgery, the NYU Hospitals Center, and the New York-Presbyterian Hospital. Poorly-rated hospitals, on the other hand, include Bellevue Hospital Center and Interfaith Medical Center. Once you’ve searched for hospitals in a given locale, you can organize them based on their overall rating, distance and type of hospital.

If you’ve been struggling to find a hospital you trust, this tool could prove very useful in your search. Try it out and let us know what you think!