They're grading hospitals now?

Ever wonder which hospital in your town is really the best? Well, that may be impossible to ever know, but Medicare has started tracking treatments for 3 life threatening ailments, and they are going to be adding more. They even plan to track individual doctors results in the not so distant future. Here's a great article explaining it all-

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/health/25medicine.html?oref=login

And here's a link to the page that lets you compare the hospitals in your city side by side-

http://www.medicare.gov/Hospital/Home.asp?version=default&browser=IE%7C6%7CWinNT&language=English&defaultstatus=1&pagelist=Home

Guess which hospital graded out the best in my fair city? Why little old University Medical Center did! And it's a (gasp) charity hospital! I'm so proud.