Compare what matters for your care.
Use public reports to understand hospital quality and safety, then bring your questions to your clinician. Work through the steps at your own pace. You can print your comparison when you finish.
Select a type of care and up to three hospitals to create separate, printable reports with questions to ask.
What care do you need?
A hospital’s overall rating can hide differences in the service you need. Start with the condition or treatment, then consider your risks.
Choose the most specific care type that fits. “Planned surgery or procedure” covers operations or procedures such as gallbladder surgery. “Other planned care” covers a hospital stay without a planned procedure.
For your notes only. Entering a condition, procedure, or risk here does not search for it or retrieve additional results. Your notes appear in your comparison summary. The care category you select above determines which available CMS measures are considered.
- Confirm the hospital offers the service and can manage likely complications.
- Ask your clinician which measures and specialists are most relevant to your situation.
- Ratings summarize past performance; their measurement periods differ.
List hospitals you can realistically use.
Add up to three hospital locations. Begin typing a hospital name, city, ZIP code, or six-digit CMS facility ID, then select the exact location from the CMS matches. Verify your insurance, the service, the clinician, travel, and any required referral directly with your plan and hospital.
Use the notes fields below to record information you confirm with your health plan and the facility. Entering an insurance company or plan name will not return coverage information. This site cannot verify insurance coverage, network participation, available services, or appointment availability.
- Ask your health plan: Is this facility—and each clinician involved—in network for my specific plan? Is the planned care covered, and is prior authorization required?
- Ask the facility: Does this location provide the care I need? What scheduling, referral, travel, or accessibility arrangements should I confirm?
Record what you confirmed, who provided the information, the date, and questions still to ask.
Check more than one public report.
Open each source in a new tab and search for the exact hospital. Then record results separately for each hospital. You can leave sources that do not apply blank.
Compare overall stars and detailed outcomes, infections, readmissions, and patient experience. The overall star is a starting point; open the measures that match your care.
Review the A–F safety grade and its individual safety measures. Also check Leapfrog’s detailed hospital ratings, including relevant maternity and safety practices.
Check accreditation and any relevant program certification for the specific organization and location. Accreditation does not substitute for outcome measures.
Review its combined hospital quality view and any available specialty results. Check the underlying measures and dates.
Search your state health department for hospital inspection and complaint reports. For specialty care, use cardiac surgery, transplant, or other relevant program reports. U.S. News, Healthgrades, and Castle Connolly can add context; look at what each actually measures.
Record findings by hospital
For each source, enter a result that matters for your care and the period it covers. If a result is missing, note that and ask why. Open a hospital below to enter its findings.
Choose questions for each hospital.
Open each hospital below and select the questions you want to ask its care team. Your selection in Step 1 adds relevant questions, including questions for the selected procedures, alongside the general questions.
During a hospital stay, tell the care team promptly if you notice a possible safety concern.
Review and print your comparison.
This site does not save your comparison notes for a future visit. Print or save this summary as a PDF before refreshing or closing the page. Keep your copy to use at an appointment.
My hospital comparison
This guide helps organize public information and questions. It does not recommend a hospital or replace advice from your care team.