October 23rd, 2008

The following is a portion of a press release from the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance, which is a voluntary group of heath care organizations collaboratively working together to improve the quality of health care for the people of Pennsylvania:

A survey of more than 800 Pennsylvanians finds growing awareness and use of hospital quality reporting web sites. Results of the survey, sponsored by the Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance (PHCQA), were made public today as part of an announced upgrade and expansion of the PHCQA web site. The site compiles hospital quality data in a searchable format that allows consumers to see and compare hospital performance in a variety of quality measures. The web site name has been changed to PAHealthCareQuality.org.

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In addition to updated hospital quality measures for heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, and infection prevention, the upgraded web site has added the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) survey responses, which are patient experience measures; and Appropriate Care Measures (ACM), which are voluntarily reported measures that indicate the percent of patients who received all of the recommended care for their respective conditions.

Visit PHCQA’s website, linked to above, for all of their performance reports.