Big Hospitals Not Always Best Choices for Surgeries

According to report rating nearly 2,500 hospitals

Patients going to a hospital for surgery care about many things, from how kind the nurses are to how good the food is, but Consumers Union (CU) figures what they care about most is whether they stay in the hospital longer than they should and whether they come out alive.

In the first effort of its kind, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine released ratings of 2,463 U.S. hospitals in all 50 states on Wednesday, based on the quality of surgical care. The group used two measures: the percentage of Medicare patients who died in the hospital during or after their surgery, and the percentage who stayed in the hospital longer than expected based on standards of care for their condition. Both are indicators of complications and overall quality of care, said Dr John Santa, medical director of Consumer Reports Health.