Hospitals and teaching hospitals safety ratings

Looking for good news about hospital safety? More hospitals are required to track and report more data, so our updated hospital safety Ratings now include 2,031 hospitals—up from 1,159 institutions in our August 2012 report.

But we still find cause for concern:

• The lowest-scoring hospital, Clinch Valley Medical Center in Richlands, Va., got only a 14 on our 100-point scale. Beth Stiltner, the hospital's quality/risk manager, says that the score represents "only a small piece of the entire hospital's performance" and that in 2012 the hospital reduced its infection rates. We'll incorporate new data into future updates when they're released by the government.
• The average score for all hospitals was 49. "When it comes to health care, average should never be good enough, and this average is clearly not even close," says John Santa, M.D., director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.
• The highest-scoring hospital, Bellin Memorial Hospital in Green Bay, Wis., got just a 74. That shows that even top-scoring hospitals have room for improvement.

In addition, teaching hospitals, which are supposed to prepare future doctors, are lagging. Almost two-thirds of the nation's 258 teaching hospitals that report enough data for us to calculate a safety score ranked below average. "Those hospitals should set the bar higher," Santa says. "But that is not happening."

That trend is especially acute in and around New York City: 27 of the 28 teaching hospitals in the region scored below the national average. The exception: Winthrop University Hospital in Mineola, N.Y. Overall, 58 of the area's 70 hospitals with a safety score ranked below average.

Our updated safety score focuses on five key measures: readmissions, complications, communication, the overuse of CT scans, and infections. The data, which come from federal and state governments, cover different time ranges, depending on the specific measure. See a full description of how we rate hospitals.

Our Ratings are an important measure, but they're not the only source you should consult. They don't, for example, assess how successful hospitals are at treating medical conditions. So before a planned hospital stay, consult multiple sources, such as Hospital Compare, run by the federal government, and the Leapfrog Group, an independent organization that tracks hospital safety and quality.