Mission:
To improve hospital care in California and provide information to consumers about quality of care at specific hospitals.

Background:
To help hospitals improve patient care, the Picker Institute, a healthcare research group, conducted a survey in 2000 on the hospital experiences of twenty-one thousand people who were inpatients at 113 general acute care hospitals. A second survey conducted in 2002 collected information from thirty-five thousand patients at 181 hospitals. Those results have been published in a report, What Patients Think About California Hospitals (16 pages, PDF), and are also available on an interactive Web site developed by the California Institute for Health Systems Performance and the California HealthCare Foundation. The survey is part of a growing movement to publicly report on the performance of the state's healthcare organizations.

Outstanding Feature:
Visitors to the site can retrieve ratings on hospitals within a particular zip code, city, county, or region based on a range of criteria, including level of respect for patient preferences, coordination of care, physical comfort, emotional support, and transition to home. The site also offers guidance to prospective patients on how to approach doctors, insurance companies, and friends and families for help in choosing hospitals.