Choosing Quality Care
Public data. Better questions. More informed healthcare choices.
Find credible information. Understand your options. Know what to ask.
Choosing a hospital, surgery center, or nursing home can feel overwhelming. Public information about quality and safety can help—but you may not know it exists, where to find it, or what it means for your care.
Choosing Quality Care helps patients, families, and caregivers find credible sources of publicly reported information and prepare questions before making a decision.
What do quality and patient safety mean?
Healthcare quality means how well care meets a person’s needs and helps achieve the best possible health outcomes. It includes effective treatment, timely care, clear communication, and respect for patients’ needs and preferences.
Patient safety is an essential part of quality. It focuses on preventing avoidable harm during care—such as medication errors, infections acquired during treatment, falls, or procedures performed on the wrong patient or body part.
This guide helps you explore both: how well a facility provides care and how it works to prevent harm. Patient-experience information adds another perspective, including how people describe communication, responsiveness, and their involvement in care.
Why use this guide?
Government agencies and private organizations have long published healthcare quality reports, ratings, and widely recognized “Best” hospital and facility lists. These resources can be useful, but they measure different aspects of care and may reach different conclusions. No single report, rating, or ranking should be the sole basis for choosing care.
Choosing Quality Care brings these resources together, helps you understand their differences and limitations, and suggests questions to ask before making a decision.
What this guide offers
- A starting point: Links to established sources of quality, safety, and patient-experience information.
- Help understanding the information: Explanations of what different measures and ratings tell you—and their limitations.
- Questions to ask: Prompts to help you discuss your needs and concerns with healthcare professionals and facilities.
What this guide cannot tell you
Choosing Quality Care does not rank facilities, recommend a single “best” facility, or provide medical advice. Ratings are attributed to the reporting organizations. The guide’s colored summaries organize selected public findings; they are not official ratings or recommendations.
Public reports offer only part of the picture. Information reflects earlier care, and some facilities or services have limited data. A facility’s overall rating may not describe the particular care you need. Missing information does not necessarily mean poor care, and a high rating cannot guarantee an individual outcome.
More detailed results may exist in specialty clinical registries or a facility’s own records, but some are not publicly available and this guide does not retrieve all of them. Learn about specialty registries and access to their results.
How to use the guide
- Choose a care setting below.
- Explore the available information. Look at measures relevant to your needs, rather than relying on one rating.
- Record your findings and questions. Ask about gaps, conflicting results, and the facility’s experience providing the care you need. Use the downloadable comparison worksheet (fillable PDF) to type your notes or print a blank copy and write by hand. Print or copy your on-screen notes before leaving.
- Discuss your options. Consider the information alongside clinical needs, insurance coverage, location, availability, and what matters to you.
Even when your choices are limited, this guide can help you prepare for conversations about quality and safety.
Why I Created Choosing Quality Care — a message from the founder
Start with the care you are considering
Have questions? Read the FAQ.
Choosing a Hospital
Compare hospital quality, patient safety, patient experience, and condition-relevant information.
- Use the step-by-step worksheet
- Explore selected procedure measures, including colonoscopy, hip/knee replacement, and cataract surgery
- Create an automated CMS report
- Review 10 hospital safety topics
Choosing a Nursing Home
Compare nursing homes and rehabilitation facilities according to the care a resident needs.
- Create an automated CMS comparison
- Review staffing, inspections, outcomes, and alerts
- Check optional accreditation and safety topics
Choosing an Ambulatory Surgery Center
Compare Medicare-certified outpatient surgery centers for a planned procedure.
- Review CMS safety and procedure-related measures
- See OAS CAHPS patient-experience results
- Record Leapfrog findings and questions