How well do you know your local hospitals, or the ones in your parents' community? Evidence shows that sometimes we don't know our hospitals as well as we think we do. It's true that pretty private rooms and a nice view are worth a lot, but they aren't top of the list when it comes to critical medical care.

Medicare may make you nuts sometimes, but they are taking some very welcome steps to open the curtains that surround many of our medical "closed societies." The latest is the addition of more comparative information about U.S. hospitals that treat Medicare patients.

Since hospitals that don't treat Medicare patients are few and far between, this equates to some good information available to consumers about most North American hospitals.

The Medicare Hospital Compare website now allows anyone to anonymously compare certain quality measures between hospitals. While the quality measures included cover only a few select items, they can give consumers (that's us) a general idea of how our local hospitals measure up. If your hospital consistently scores high on the outcomes that were measured, you can probably be fairly optimistic that they should do well in areas that weren't measured.

For hospitals that don't seem to measure up, we're better off knowing while we're relatively healthy, rather than after we arrive in the emergency room with something serious. We may choose to go to a more distant hospital rather than the closer one with a less than stellar rating.

If any of the seniors in your family have a health condition that might require hospital treatment, it would be a good idea to find out now which hospital their doctor would recommend. If the recommended hospital doesn't appear to measure up, the time to talk about this with the doctor is "soon." If your parents' primary care doctor doesn't have a relationship with a well-ranked hospital, you and your parents may have some important decisions to make.

In announcing the new hospital comparison tool, Kerry Weems, Acting Administrator of CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) said that, "Medicare beneficiaries tell us ... they want to know what their neighbors are saying about the care they received while in the hospital; they want to know how much it costs; and they want to know about the quality of that care. We are now sharing that information."

Couldn't have said it better myself!

Right now, the Medicare Hospital Compare website gives us comparative information about how much hospitals have been paid by Medicare for certain procedures, and how well they performed on the measures below. The closer to 100% the better, of course:

Surgical Care/Prevention of Surgical Infections

•  Percent of surgery patients who received preventive antibiotics one hour before incision

•  Percent of surgery patients who received the appropriate preventive antibiotics for their surgery

•  Percent of surgery patients whose preventive antibiotics were stopped within 24 hours after surgery

•  Percent of surgery patients whose doctors ordered treatments to prevent blood clots (venous thromboembolism) for certain types of surgeries

•  Percent of surgery patients who received treatment to prevent blood clots within 24 hours before or after selected surgeries

Heart Attack Care

•  Percent of heart attack patients given aspirin at arrival

•  Percent of heart attack patients given aspirin at discharge

•  Percent of heart attack patients given ACE inhibitor or ARB for left ventricular systolic dysfunction (LVSD)

•  Percent of heart attack patients given smoking cessation advice/counseling

•  Percent of heart attack patients given beta blockers at discharge

•  Percent of heart attack patients given beta blockers at arrival

•  Percent of heart attack patients given fibrinolytic medication within 30 minutes of arrival

•  Percent of heart attack patients given PCI within 90 minutes of arrival

Acute Care: Pneumonia

•  Percent of  pneumonia patients given oxygenation assessment

•  Percent of pneumonia patients assessed and given pneumococcal vaccination

•  Percent of pneumonia patients whose initial emergency room blood culture was performed prior to administration of the first hospital dose of antibiotics

•  Percent of pneumonia patients given smoking cessation advice/counseling

•  Percent of pneumonia patients given initial antibiotics within 6 hours after arrival

•  Percent of pneumonia patients given the most appropriate initial antibiotics

•  Percent of pneumonia patients assessed and given influenza vaccination

Acute Care: Heart Failure

•  Percent of heart failure patients given discharge instructions

•  Percent of heart failure patients given an evaluation of left ventricular systolic (LVS) function

•  Percent of heart failure patients give ACE inhibitor or ARB for left ventricular systolic dysfunction

•  Percent of heart failure patients given smoking cessation advice/counseling

Patient Satisfaction Measures

•  Percent of patients who reported that their nurses "Always" communicated well

•  Percent of patients who reported that their doctors "Always" communicated well

•  Percent of patients who reported that they "Always" received help as soon as they wanted

•  Percent of patients who reported that their pain was "Always" well controlled

•  Percent of patients who reported that staff "Always" explained about medicines before giving it to them

•  Percent of patients who reported that their room and bathroom were "Always" clean

•  Percent of patients who reported that the area around their room was "Always" quiet at night

•  Percent of patients at each hospital who reported that YES, they were given information about what to do during their recovery at home

•  Percent of patients who gave their hospital a rating of 9 or 10 on a scale from 0 (lowest) to 10 (highest)

•  Percent of patients who reported YES, they would definitely recommend the hospital

The hospital comparison site also gives you an idea of what Medicare paid each hospital for an average stay for several diagnoses. I was surprised to see that the local hospital in my community was paid more than the big teaching hospitals for most patient stays, and yet they didn't rate as well on the above comparisons. I surmise that this is because patients may have had to stay longer, but this is just a guess. I do know that I don't want to go there for much more than a hangnail.