Sources and methodology
This guide translates public hospital and nursing home quality and patient safety information into a comparison process for patients, families, and caregivers. The sources below materially informed its content.
How this guide uses information
The guide summarizes and organizes information from public agencies, accrediting organizations, nonprofit reporting programs, specialty societies, and consumer rating services. It does not calculate hospital ratings, independently audit or validate hospital performance, reproduce proprietary methodologies, or recommend or endorse a hospital.
Measures, methods, reporting periods, participation, and website features can change. Visitors should confirm definitions and the latest available results on each original source, record the date or rating edition reviewed, and ask the hospital about missing or conflicting information.
Last source review: September 23, 2026.
Public reporting and accreditation
Hospital ratings, outcomes, complications, infections, readmissions, patient experience, and other measures.
Downloadable hospital quality datasets and measure information.
Resources and methodology for the CMS overall hospital rating.
Letter grades and measure details focused on preventable harm.
Detailed quality and safety results, including survey measures.
Accreditation, certification, and verification information.
Information about infection measures and national and state progress.
Inspection, complaint, enforcement, adverse-event, maternal health, and infection reporting varies by state. Use the official agency for the state where the hospital is located.
Patient safety and engagement guidance
Resources for participating in care and improving safety during a hospital stay.
Plain-language prompts that encourage patients and families to ask questions and participate in care.
Standardized patient experience survey information and guidance.
Preprocedure verification, site marking, time-outs, identification, and related safety expectations.
Hand hygiene, personal protective equipment, and infection-exposure practices.
Specialty care resources
Voluntary public reporting of cardiac, thoracic, and congenital surgical outcomes.
Transplant program activity and outcomes.
Accreditation and quality programs for cancer care.
Patient information used to shape heart-care questions.
Patient and caregiver considerations for stroke services and rehabilitation.
Questions about experience, outcomes, risks, and recovery.
Questions about treatment choices, side effects, coordination, and clinical trials.
Framework for risk-appropriate maternal services and hospital capabilities.
Additional hospital comparison services
A hospital comparison view using publicly reported data and specialty results where available.
Annual national, regional, specialty, procedure, and condition ratings.
Methods for hospital outcome ratings and recognition programs.
Hospital and physician recognition information. Review the criteria for the specific designation being considered.
Selected procedure measures and their limits
Public data are not available for every procedure or every facility. The guide maps selected procedures to the CMS measure IDs below, checked against CMS descriptions. This validates the mapping, not a facility’s underlying submissions or an individual patient’s expected outcome. Missing, suppressed, or inapplicable results remain unavailable.
| Selection | CMS measures | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Colonoscopy | OP_32; OP_29 | Hospital outpatient 7-day unplanned hospital visits; appropriate follow-up screening recommendation where reported. Not all endoscopy. |
| Hip replacement; knee replacement | COMP_HIP_KNEE; READM_30_HIP_KNEE | Combined elective hip/knee hospital complication and readmission results, not separate hip-only or knee-only results. |
| Cataract surgery | OP_31 | Reported visual-function improvement within 90 days in the hospital outpatient setting. Not all eye surgery or all complications. |
Check each measure’s population, units, time period, CMS footnotes, and benchmark comparison. Measures may be restricted to eligible Medicare patients and do not necessarily describe working-age patients, every clinician, or other settings. Hospital-wide stars and inpatient HCAHPS are separate context. Limited comparable measures can produce a gray or yellow summary even when a usable procedure result is displayed.
CMS hospital unplanned visits · CMS hospital complications · CMS timely and effective care · CMS measure definitions and collection periods
Where might more detailed information exist?
Public quality reports cover selected aspects of care—not every diagnosis, treatment, or procedure. A hospital may treat many people with a condition without having publicly reported outcomes specific to that condition.
Hospitals and clinicians may collect additional information through specialty clinical registries—programs that track care and outcomes for particular diseases or procedures. Access varies. Some programs publish selected results for named hospitals or clinical programs. Others primarily provide confidential reports to participating organizations or data to approved researchers.
Choosing Quality Care does not retrieve these registries’ full clinical datasets or include every public reporting source. Where useful public specialty reports are available, this guide may link to them. An unavailable result in this guide does not establish that no relevant information exists elsewhere.
Examples of specialty reporting resources
| Specialty | Registry or reporting program | Public-access distinction |
|---|---|---|
| Cancer | National Cancer Database (NCDB) | Detailed reports support participating programs; hospital-specific NCDB survival reports are restricted from public release. |
| Cardiology | American College of Cardiology’s NCDR registries | Selected performance information is publicly reported by voluntarily participating hospitals. Full registry data and public reports are different resources. |
| Heart and chest surgery | Society of Thoracic Surgeons National Database | Selected heart, lung, esophageal, and congenital heart surgery outcomes are publicly reported by voluntarily participating programs. |
| Hip and knee replacement | American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons’ American Joint Replacement Registry (AJRR) | Public annual reports provide aggregate findings; detailed institution and surgeon dashboards serve participating organizations and clinicians. |
| Surgery across specialties | American College of Surgeons National Surgical Quality Improvement Program (ACS NSQIP) | Participating organizations receive clinical outcome and benchmarking information. Research files restrict identification of hospitals; they are not an unrestricted public facility-comparison database. |
| Vascular procedures | Society for Vascular Surgery Vascular Quality Initiative (SVS VQI) | Collects clinical and follow-up outcomes and provides reports for participating centers and regional improvement groups. Public participation information does not provide the same detail as those reports. |
| Organ transplantation | Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients (SRTR) | Public program-specific reports include waiting-list and post-transplant outcomes. |
Question to ask: “Do you participate in a registry relevant to my treatment, and what results can you share for the specific care I need?”
A missing result does not mean poor care, lack of experience, or an unavailable service. Also distinguish a missing or restricted public result from a temporary retrieval failure; see the report’s retrieval notices.