How does your hospital rate in its quality of care?

"You can find out a lot more about buying a washing machine than buying health care."

This is a disturbing but true statement.

Think about it. When choosing a doctor, do you know how s/he rates compared to other doctors? When choosing a hospital, do you know how it rates compared to other hospitals? For instance, New York City has many hospitals to choose from. Do you know which one is the best?

The sad answer is no.

It has only been recently that Health and Human Services has begun ranking hospitals based upon some of the data they have collected (www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov). This has helped improve the performances of some hospitals--- as described in the New York Times article, "The Data Tell a Different Story on Heart Patients." Nothing is more motivating than having your performance data made public—now, hospitals can't hide anymore. As one doctor in the article stated, "I think people underestimate the role of pride." (It's very unfortunate this is the main--if not only--reason hospitals are forcing themselves to improve).

CareTALK aims to change this. In collaboration with GoogleHealth and its strategic partners, CareTALK will provide rankings for caregiving products, goods, and services. For example, the gray market for professional caregivers carries some risk because the caregivers are not vetted by professionals. We, with our partners, aim to change this. We aim to take some of the unnecessary risk out.

The consumer has been kept in the dark too long. It's time for a change. Consumers need to be empowered and informed.