Helping Ohians make more informed health care decisions, the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) has launched the Ohio Hospital Compare site.

“The Ohio Hospital Compare website will help Ohioans take charge of their health-care decisions,” said ODH Director Alvin Jackson, MD.

Ohio Hospital Compare, available from the home page of ODH’s website at www.odh.ohio.gov, is an interactive site that allows consumers to make a side-by-side comparison of hospitals on more than 100 different performance measures in the following categories:

• Heart attack care
• Heart failure care
• Heart surgery
• Stroke care
• Pneumonia care
• Surgical care
• Hospital acquired infections
• Infection prevention
• Patient safety
• Patient satisfaction
• Children’s asthma care
• Pregnancy/delivery

The site contains both process measures which reflect what is considered optimal for patient care and outcome measures which reflect negative outcomes that occur during care. The majority of the measures are based on national standards. This site also gives Ohio’s hospitals and other providers data to help improve quality of care.

Signed into law Aug. 9, 2006, H.B. 197 of the 126th General Assembly created the Hospital Measures Advisory Council (HMAC) and mandated ODH collect and make publicly available hospital performance measures, which ODH did Jan. 1. The goal of HMAC was to select appropriate performance measures for use by the public while minimizing reporting burden on hospitals.