Pennsylvania hospital performance data now online

The Pennsylvania Health Care Quality Alliance is starting a new Web site that has quality reports that compare performance and outcomes of all 162 primary acute care hospitals in the state. Users of the Web site can look up hospitals' track records for treating heart attacks, heart failure, pneumonia, or preventing certain hospital-acquired infections. Those four categories were the first chosen, in part, because they are ailments among the most common and most costly for hospitals, said Alliance representatives.