The Department of Health has launched a new comparison element to the NHS Choices website, which allows patients to compare hospitals on indicators from car parking to mortality rates.
The service provides a web-based score card to help patients choose the hospital most suited to their needs.
It works in a similar way to other internet comparison websites that are largely aimed at helping people choose holidays and insurance but instead enables patients to use a score card to compare a several different hospitals on a range of indicators.
The score cards also rate hospitals on key measures, including waiting times, MRSA infection rates and cleanliness and also allow patients to compare clinical performance. Users of the site also have the option to drill down into the detail of clinical performance.
They can look at specific operations or mortality rates types of care by entering the relevant condition and a postcode into the “find and choose services tool.”
Health secretary, Andy Burnham, who launched the website, said: “Going into hospital is one of the most important moments in anyone’s life. And yet we don’t equip patients with anything like enough information to make informed decisions.”
Burnham added: “The new scorecard helps patients make the right choice of hospital for them by bringing together all the information in one place for the first time. The service also offers an unparalleled opportunity for hospitals to be made aware of any issues and act to improve their services, helping to drive up standards across the board, and become more patient focused.”
Hospitals across England are also asking patients to leave feedback about their trust to enable patients to read comments and see what proportion of users who left a rating would recommend the hospital to a friend.
Michael Summers, vice chairman of the Patients Association, said: “The more information that patients have about local availability of their healthcare and the standards that they are looking for, the better it is. We would fully support the launch of this important web tool and would hope that patients will benefit substantially from it.”
The Department of Health will also launch a similar service to allow patients to rate and compare GP practices, towards the end of the year.
NHS Choices