Is Your Hospital Safe? Not so fast, consumers...
An existing government website has recently expanded to include the patient safety ratings of thousands of U.S. hospitals. This site, Medicare's Hospital Compare features data on surgical complications, infections and potentially avoidable deaths. Sound intriguing? Useful? Consumer-friendly? This is the first step towards government based reductions of Medicare reimbursement of hospitals that don't 'make the grade.' But hold the line and consider the following....
While some information provided on the Medicare website has some usefulness to the average patient; let us examine what this might mean for an individual who suffers from multiple medical co-morbidities and presents a high surgical risk. Such patients are becoming increasingly common today with an aging population that has survived, because of modern medicine, many of the ailments that prior generations succumbed to.
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