New patient tool for seeking quality care includes surgery

Editor's Note

Mayo Clinic has released a free, digital tool requiring no account or subscription that allows anyone to investigate healthcare quality by city, care specialty, or hospital, an October 30 press release from the health system reports. The tool includes search capability for a range of specific surgical specialties, such as oncology, cardiovascular, and spinal procedures.

The HealthLocator digital tool, launched also on October 30 and developed by the Mayo Clinic’s Kern Center, aggregates national quality data for more than 5,000 hospitals. As described by Mayo Clinic President and CEO Gianrico Farrugia, MD, "HealthLocator brings together existing external national quality data into one clear, trusted source to help people select a high-quality hospital for themselves or a loved one.” Dr Farrugia and co-authors, discussing the methodology behind the HealthLocator tool in the New England Journal of Medicine Catalyst, said it includes quality data across three domains to derive a single composite score: quality outcomes, patient experience, and patient safety.

These data draw from publicly available Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems information that includes metrics such as readmissions, mortality, timeliness of care, patient experience, and hospital-acquired conditions. The tool also includes an excellence indicator identifying hospitals that consistently score highly across all CMS measures. High-volume and high-6-month-survival indicators for surgical procedures and specialized care from CMS claims data are also incorporated into the tool.