Our Hospital Rating Process

Shortcuts:     Hospitals

For 7 years the Maine Health Management Coalition Foundation has been publishing quality data. During that time, the quality of health care delivered in Maine has improved. In fact, according to the latest information published by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (a part of the U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services) Maine ranks 3rd best overall in the U.S. in health care quality. We believe publishing quality ratings over these years has contributed to the improvements in Maine.

Health care in Maine can be even better; however, we all need to be part of the improvement.  If you want to receive and promote high quality medical care you should select a doctor or hospital of the highest quality, and follow their direction.  You should also speak up and ask questions.  Finally, we ask that you offer your comments and suggestions about this website to us so we too can improve.

Hospital Ratings

Almost all U.S. hospitals give data to the federal government about how well they provide that care which the experts recommend.  Patients also fill out surveys about their hospital experiences and those survey results are submitted to the federal government.  You can see this data at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.  Our ratings use this data to compare Maine’s hospitals to those in the remainder of the United States. 

We receive updates from the federal government every three months and update our information accordingly. 

In Maine, every hospital also reports information voluntarily to the Leapfrog Group.  The Leapfrog Group is an independent not-for-profit organization that collects, analyzes, and publicly reports information on the progress of hospitals to meet evidence-based quality and safety standards. Leapfrog fields an annual hospital survey that is based on the quality and safety recommendations of the National Quality Forum, The Joint Commission, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. All of these organizations work to improve the quality of health care by developing standardized methods for assessing health system performance. To learn more about the Leapfrog Hospital Survey click here.

Because of the importance of protecting patients from serious medication errors, we developed our own Medication Safety Survey.   A team of hospital pharmacists and nurses  developed the questions to ask and how to assign ratings.  The tool they came up with is called the Medication Spotlight Survey. The idea is to assess the systems hospitals have in place to prevent medication errors and insure the effectiveness of medication therapy. If you have any questions about the information, please contact the hospital.

When national programs become available to measure the use of medication tools and procedures in hospitals, we will work to use them instead of our own survey.

How often is our data updated?

For a detailed schedule of when our data is updated and where it comes from click HERE