Who is the Best Hospital in America?

According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, the number of new cars considered the safest on the highway nearly tripled in 2008. The result was helped by automakers' push to make safety equipment more widely available. Ford and Honda had the most vehicles on the list in 2008.

Ford was represented on the list by the Ford Taurus, Mercury Sable and many other passenger cars while Honda has the Accord and several Acura models on the list. I find it very interesting in knowing the safest cars to drive as I have a family to protect. If I or my family is in an accident, I will feel better knowing that my car is considered safe following a battery of crash tests.

But this got me to thinking about healthcare. If my family is in an accident, what hospital will I choose? What physician is considered to be the best at savings lives? Obviously, if I drive the safest car, I do not want to skimp on emergency medical care that can cost your life. How will you know what is the best hospital in the U.S.?

Let's do a test. I typed in the keywords "safest automobile" into Google to get 22,800,000 results listed for my search. Now, let's try to Google "safest hospital." I get a total of 1,690,000 results returned for this search. There are 13.5 safe auto results returned for each safe hospital result! The search term "safest doctor" is in the neighborhood of the hospital count with 1,690,000 listings.

How would you go about explaining the difference in the two results? Is it more important to drive a safe automobile than choose a safe hospital? Or maybe all hospitals are safe so we do not need to worry about safety at hospitals. I think you are starting to get where I am going with this line of questioning.

According to a recent study of Medicare patient records on Consumer Reports, patient safety incidents resulted in 238,337 potentially preventable deaths from 2004-2006. But patients treated at the best hospitals had a 43 percent lower chance of experiencing medical errors than those in the poorest-performing hospitals. The Center for Medicare Services operates the Hospital Compare website that has national quality of care comparisons for three clinical conditions: heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia and the surgical infection rates of each hospital.

Now, I am on to something. To know which hospital is the safest and which physician is the safest, I need to compare their respective quality outcomes. This is the problem. The healthcare industry is a $2.7 trillion industry that touches all of us in some way. However, there is no nationwide registry of health outcomes to determine quality of care levels. This leaves consumers in the dark about which hospitals and doctors are the best.

Many magazines publish a list of the best hospitals and doctors but each publication has a different method of reaching very different results. There is no consistency because each survey uses different variables. The real result that is lacking is transparency. The power behind the healthcare industry, American Medical Association, has been able to stop legislation from opening the door to what really happens in hospitals and physician offices. Apparently, this is politics at its best as money affects congressional decision making once again.

As the U.S. looks to elect a new president, there will be much debate about what health plan will be proposed by each candidate. This is an important issue that should garner national attention. But for me, I would simple ask for more transparency so I can decide what hospital or doctor is the best for me and my family.

I know more about the safety of my care than my hospital and doctor. This is true.