What opinions do Medicare patients have about area hospitals?

The Des Moines Register reports that the Iowa Department of Inspections and Appeals wants hospitals to begin reporting to the agency hospital errors that threaten the health of patients.  The Iowa Hospital Licensing Board is resisting the proposal.

In the meantime, however, there are resources people can use to find out about the performances of area hospitals.  One is a website operated by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services--"Hospital Compare."

The website, http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/, gives people the chance to compare up to three hospitals at a time on ten questions asked of Medicare patients who were admitted to the hospitals.

The survey response information is NOT available yet for Winneshiek Medical Center.  However, both Mayo Clinic/St. Mary's Hospital in Rochester and Gundersen Lutheran in La Crosse are listed.

The two hospitals do very well in the ratings.  85 percent of Medicare patients say they would "definitely" recommend Mayo Clinic/St. Mary's Hospital, while 83 percent say they would "definitely" recommend Gundersen Lutheran.  The average for all reporting hospitals in the United States is 68 percent.

The website provides not just overall ranks, but survey responses broken down by the type of medical care the patients received, so that you can do a search of hospitals according to heart procedures, for instance.