Finding Choices at Healthcare.gov

This post was written by Aliya Sternstein.

The administration this week posted information intended to help patients choose the safest hospitals on a new website aimed at granting consumers more control over their health care -- and curbing federal spending.

HealthCare.gov, a site called for under the new health care law, now includes hospital quality measures for Americans who do not require overnight stays. The site provides this new info by linking to an updated version of an older site called Hospital Compare.

Most of the new data comes from claims for patients enrolled in Medicare, the government-administrated health care plan for senior citizens and people with certain disabilities.

"These measures are important for public reporting because of the potential health risks and financial implications associated with use of imaging procedures among Medicare beneficiaries," HHS officials said in a statement.

The administration has committed itself to reducing the $100 billion in overpayments that are annually disbursed through Medicare and other entitlement programs, as well as spent on contractors.

The new data includes statistics on the rates of outpatient magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) for low back pain, a procedure that can inflict unnecessary risk and cost according to studies, and ratios that show how frequently outpatient departments gave individuals two computed tomography (CT) scans when only a single scan may have been needed. CT scans expose patients to radiation that when overused can be harmful to patients.

Different tables show whether hospitals immediately treated outpatients suffering possible heart attacks with therapies that reduce the risk of death, such as aspirin and drugs that break up blood costs.