Good Facts to Know

I thought these were some tips and facts worth knowing. For the full article see:
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Insurance/InsureYourHealth/10ThingsYourHospitalWontTellYou.aspx

Find the medical center with the longest track record, best survival rate and highest volume in the procedure. You don't want to be the team's third hip replacement, says Samantha Collier, the vice president of medical affairs at HealthGrades, which rates hospitals.

A 2006 study from the Institute of Medicine found that hospital emergency departments are overburdened, underfunded and ill-prepared to handle disasters as the number of people turning to ERs for primary care keeps rising.

An ambulance is turned away from an ER once every minute due to overcrowding, according to the study; the situation is exacerbated by shortages in many of the "on call" backup services for cardiologists, orthopedists and neurosurgeons. And it's getting worse.

About 2 million people a year contract hospital-related infections, and about 90,000 die, according to the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The recent increase in antibiotic-resistant bugs and the mounting cost of health care -- to which infections add about $4.5 billion annually -- have mobilized the medical community to implement processes designed to decrease infections.

Here is some advice from me:
If you have a serious grievance or concern and feel you are getting no where, ask for Quality Control, Quality Assurance/Improvement, or the Nurse Supervisor.
If these avenues fail, pick up the phone, dial the hospitals general number, ask the operator for any of these titles.