The Hospital Quality Alliance, a public-private collaboration established to promote public reporting on hospital quality of care, is the first initiative that routinely reports data on hospitals' performance from across the country. The HQA consists of organizations that represent consumers, hospitals, doctors, employers, accrediting organizations and federal agencies, including the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The HQA's web site - www.HospitalCompare.hhs.gov - is intended to help patients make informed choices when selecting a hospital based on quality indicators.

Hospitals report clinical data to the HQA which then posts the information on its web site as hospital quality measures. A quality measure is medical information from patient records converted into a rate or percentage that shows how well hospitals care for its patients. Consumers can use this quality information to help them compare hospitals. The hospital quality measures tracked by the HQA currently include:

• Eight measures related to heart attack care
  


• Four measures related to heart failure care
  


• Six measures related to pneumonia care
  


• Two measures related to surgical infection prevention