Visit these sites before choosing a hospital

If you’re a baby boomer in Wisconsin researching health care options for yourself, your parents or your children, you might be interested to know about all of the resources available to you.

Launched in 2004, the Wisconsin Hospital Association’s CheckPoint web site provides data on 128 hospitals, which serve 99 percent of the state’s population. Click on “Reports” to get started.

Additional information is available from Hospital Compare, a web site maintained by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. This service rates health care providers nationwide on how well they care for patients that have certain conditions and procedures – including heart attack, heart failure, chronic lung disease, pneumonia, adult diabetes and chest pain; angioplasty, bypass, and other heart surgeries; abdominal surgeries; back and neck surgeries; bladder, kidney and prostate surgeries; and female reproductive operations.

To use Hospital Compare, click on the “Find and Compare Hospitals” button. Be sure to also read the section “Learn how to use the information from this site” under Additional Information.

The Leapfrog Group also collects information on hospital safety standards. You can find data on overall patient safety ratings or search for data on selected procedures.

“The data available now is just the front edge of what people will have exposure to five years from now,” said John Brixius, a principal with Safe Harbor & Retirement of Manitowoc in a recent Manitowoc Herald Times Reporter article. “End users will be more educated, and as a result, you will be a better consumer and we will have less expensive health care.”

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