Hospital death rates unveiled

In 2007, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released a broad comparison of death rates for heart attacks and heart failure, noting how hospitals compared with the national average without releasing the death rates themselves. But this year the agency decided to disclose them to consumers, and posted its new mortality estimates on the government website hospitalcompare.hhs.gov, along with more than two dozen other measures of how well hospitals meet patients' needs.