By IRN/AP
Springfield, IL – Consumer advocates are giving Illinois fairly good marks for an online hospital report card. But it doesn't get an A-plus. Patients can use the web-based tool to see how hospitals measure up on safety, nurse staffing levels and even prices.
For instance, the Illinois Hospital Report Card provides consumers with whether their local hospitals are significantly better or worse than the state average on injuries to babies during birth. Patients can see how many times a foreign object such as a surgical sponge was left inside a patient's body during a procedure.
Illinois Department of Public Health spokesperson Melaney Arnold says new features also include customer reviews.
The report card now includes red, yellow and green icons on numerous safety measures. Red means the hospital's performance was worse than the state or national average. Green means better. Yellow means no better or worse than average.
Data were updated through June 2009. The site will be routinely updated with the most recent data available.
But national patient safety experts say they want the report card to use easier language.
Diane Pinakiewicz is President of the non-profit National Patient Safety Foundation in Boston. She praises the Illinois site but says its jargon is hard to understand.
Lisa McGiffert of Consumers Union's Safe Patient Project says the site is easy to navigate. She likes that it allows patients to compare several hospitals at once, but she wants to see simpler language and more clarity on why some scores are good or bad.
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