Taking Care of You and Your Family

Educational Resources

• Healthcare Performance Tracking Tool
  HHS has launched a new web-based tool intended to make it easier for consumers to monitor and measure the nation's healthcare system's performance. Compare trends across measures and compare national trends with those at the state and regional level.
• Compare Hospitals – The Leapfrog Group
  Compare hospitals on overall patient safety ratings and safety of selected procedures. 
• Compare Hospitals – U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
  Another interactive website to compare hospitals on various performance measures.
• Ensure A Safe Endoscopic Procedure – American Society for Gastrointestinal Endoscopy
• Get Smart: Know When Antibiotics Work – U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  When you feel sick, antibiotics may not be the answer for every illness. This site helps you know when antibiotics work and when they wont.
• List of the top 40 Quietest Hospitals, as Rated by Patients
  The following hospitals obtained the 40 highest scores on the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems rating for "Percent of patients who reported that the area around their room was 'always' quiet."
• Getting Safer Care– Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality
  Get information on how to prevent common medical errors, get quality care, educational information when using hospitals and clinics.
• Hand washing: Clean Hands Save Lives– U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  Keeping hands clean through improved hand hygiene is one of the most important steps we can take to avoid getting sick and spreading germs to others.
• Healthcare Organization Quality Check – The Joint Commission
  Allows consumers to search for accredited and cerified organizations by city and state, by name or zip code. Download free  hospital performance measure results.
• Healthcare Providers Rate Card - Informed Patient Institute
  Rates the usefulness of online doctor, hospital, and nursing home report cards.
• Making Care Safer – U.S. Deparment of Health and Human Services
  Provides information on how to prepare your hospital stay for success, eliminate all-cause harm, and hospital enagement networks.
• Preventing Healthcare-Associated Infections – U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  Before you visit a hospital as a patient or visitor, check out these tips to ensure safety for you and your loved ones.
• Safe Care Campaign
  Founded y Victoria and Armando Nahum in 2006 after 3 different members of their family were infected in 3 different hospitals in 3 different states in just 10 months’ time.
  Their son, Joshua died from an infection acquired in the hospital, but not until after gram negative bacteria in his skull caused so much pressure around his brain that it pushed part of his brain into his spinal column, making him a permanent ventilator - dependent quadriplegic.
• Safe Injection Practices: Safe Injection Practices Coalition
  Raises awareness among patients and healthcare providers about safe injection practices. The campaign aims to eradicate outbreaks resulting from unsafe injection practices.
• Safe Patient Project - American Healthcare Association’s Patient Care Partnership Consumer’s Union
  View disclosures of health care outcomes (such as hospital-acquired infection rates and incidents of medical errors) and information about health care providers (such as complaints against and license violations of physicians and hospitals). The campaign also works to improve drug safety by ensuring that consumers have full information about prescription drugs (such as in direct-to-consumer ads and access to clinical trial results), by strengthening oversight of the FDA and by ending practices that create conflicts of interest (such as drug company gifts to doctors)
• Speak Up: Prevent Errors In Your Care–The Joint Commission 
  How to talk to your doctor about any worries you have about your safety and ask them what they are doing to protect you.
• The Innovation Center– Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services
  Learn the latest ways CMS is delivering care that improves care and health while lowering costs. 
• Vital Signs – U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
  Issues include colorectal and breast cancer screening, obesity, alcohol and tobacco use, access to health care, HIV testing, seat belt use, cardiovascular disease, teen pregnancy and healthcare-associated infections, asthma, and foodborne disease.
• Vaccinations - How To and When
  an innovative new website to help parents and other consumers learn about the most effective way to protect themselves and their children from infectionous diseases and learn about immunization.