About Our Report Card

There are several national organizations that define the best ways to measure quality. These organizations use research and expert consensus to decide what data to gather, how to analyze it and how to display the data. They set the standards to ensure that any hospital which participates has reliable and accurate data. Some measures are very straightforward and objective, and some are based on subjective information such as patient opinions.

We want to be transparent and unbiased in our quality data reporting, and we choose reliable national measures and then we report our data even if the results show that we need to improve. We share all the data with you, even if we are not yet meeting our performance goals on the measures.

Our quality measures were chosen because they meet these goals:

• Transparency - there are a large number of measures, covering many different aspects of our inpatient care
• Public methodology - the methods of collecting and analyzing data are available for study
• Validity - we want measures to be validated by reputable research or expertise
• Comparisons - we want measures that can be compared to a national average or other comparison or benchmark so consumers can compare us with the high standards set for hospitals across the nation
• Expertise - we choose measures that have been developed and tested by the most well-respected, independent national experts