Your chances of survival have become a little easier to find, thanks to information included in the government's Hospital Compare Web site.
For the first time, death rates during the past two years from pneumonia are included with death rates from heart attack and heart failure for individual hospitals across the country. These numbers can be compared with the national mortality rate for heart attack (16.1 percent), heart failure (11.1 percent) and pneumonia (11.4 percent).
In the past, the information specified only whether a hospital was performing at, above or below the national average, without disclosing numbers.
But some question the worth of these mortality rates for the general public.
Hospital Compare is run by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Continue Reading >>
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