Company Backgrounder
Focusing on quality is essential to improving the U.S. healthcare system. The Institute of Medicine reports that medical
mistakes cause as many as 98,000 deaths per year. In order to reduce this shocking statistic, the quality of healthcare must
be measured, improved and reported so that consumers, employers and payers can select the highest quality care.
HealthGrades has created targeted solutions that address quality where it really counts the results.
Health Grades, Inc. (NASDAQ:HGRD) offers patients, providers, employers, health plans, and others decision-support tools
and services that measure, evaluate and improve quality, including objective healthcare provider ratings and expert advisory
services. With extensive experience in health information and quality, HealthGrades compiles outcomes data from more
than 70 independent sources, including the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services and state hospital and medical board records. HealthGrades risk-adjusts the data using advanced
statistical techniques to make valid comparisons between providers, translates the data into easily understandable, objective
ratings, and uses this information to assess and improve the quality of healthcare. The HealthGrades management team
has worked in the healthcare industry for more than 15 years on average.
Consumer Services
Each month, more than one million consumers visit HealthGrades' Web site,
www.healthgrades.com
, to evaluate and select
healthcare providers based on quality. HealthGrades provides objective provider ratings and profiles plus tips,
recommendations and checklists for selecting the best providers. The site can tell you, for example, which hospital in your
state has the best survival rate for coronary bypass surgery, and which nursing homes in your town provide superior care.
The site also lets users select physicians among 110 specialties.
Healthcare Provider Services
HealthGrades offers proven business solutions including independent, third-party ratings and expert advisory services to
help providers assess, market and improve their quality of care. HealthGrades' Strategic Quality Initiative (SQI) helps the
nation's top-performing hospitals build and maintain a reputation for excellence and compete on the basis of quality by
promoting their services directly to employers, payers, referring physicians and consumers. This initiative has proven
successful in increasing patient volume and market share and improving staff recruitment and retention for the company's
more than 170 partners. HealthGrades' Quality Assessment and Improvement Initiative (QAI) works with clinical staff and
physicians to identify areas of quality improvement for hospitals and offers them a suite of tools and services to enhance
their quality of care.
Corporate Services
Employers and health plans are increasingly looking to provide quality information to their employees and members as part
of the new consumer-driven health plans that are designed to help offset double-digit increases in healthcare costs.
HealthGrades offers the tools to both reduce cost and improve quality, which work hand-in-hand.
HealthGrades' Quality Ratings Suite provides online and print products for companies to efficiently and effectively
disseminate our quality information and The Leapfrog Group patient-safety information to employees. We have the
industry's most comprehensive, accurate and complete database of healthcare providers in the nation. HealthGrades
licenses access to this data so that individuals can evaluate and select providers based on quality, empowering them to
make better-informed healthcare choices.
