© Copyright 2006 Health Grades, Inc. All rights reserved.
May not be reprinted or reproduced without permission from Health Grades, Inc.
Hospital Quality GuideTM Methodology 2006
Introduction
The HealthGrades Hospital Quality GuideTM is designed to provide the following types of information for
hospitals:
·
Data Sources
·
Service Area Ratings
·
Medical Issues Rating Methodologies
·
Patient Safety
·
Safe Practices
·
Cost
·
Length of Stay
·
Distance from Search Origination
·
Data Model Limitations
Data Sources
Health Grades, Inc. uses two data sources:
·
Medicare inpatient data from the MedPAR database (purchased from the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services). Medicare data is available for years 2002 through 2004.
·
Inpatient data on all patients (all payer data) provided by individual states.
For state inpatient data, the timeframe used varies depending on the medical issue:
·
For Maternity Care, Women's Health, and appendectomy HealthGrades uses inpatient data
provided by 17 states for years 2001 through 2003.
·
For all other medical issues, HealthGrades uses inpatient data provided by 17 states for years
2000 through 2002.
Except for six (6) medical issues, HealthGrades provides a choice to view hospital information using either
Medicare inpatient data or inpatient data from the 17 states. This choice is not available when:
·
The medical issue is appendectomy, maternity care, women's health, or general quality
information.
·
The search area is located in a state that does not provide inpatient data (all patients).
