Hospital Quality

Maryland hospitals and health systems share a common goal—providing the right care at the right time in the right way. Hospitals are proud of their ongoing commitment to delivering the highest quality of health care and continuous efforts to improve their quality performance. This Web site provides a tool for helping consumers learn more about the individual hospital performance of hospitals in Maryland.

This site gives you quick access to the most current information available from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) national quality initiative, Hospital Compare. The data demonstrates Maryland hospitals’ activity relating to specific clinical indicators. Click here for more information on the CMS Hospital Compare Web site.

This site also includes links to other important resources including the Maryland Health Care Commission’s Hospital Performance Evaluation Guide which includes information about hospital performance, the scope of hospital services, and hospital charges for the most common procedures. Click here to access this useful web site.

In addition, there is information about hospitals’ performance available from the Joint Commission which reviews the way hospitals deliver care and accredits them. Click here for more information on this web site.

Maryland Patient Safety Center

The Maryland Patient Safety Center is a partnership between the Maryland Hospital Association and the Delmarva Foundation. The Center brings together health care providers to study the causes of unsafe practices and puts practical improvements in place to prevent errors. Designated in 2004 by the Maryland Health Care Commission as the state’s patient safety center, it is committed to making Maryland hospitals the safest in the nation.  To carry out its charge to improve patient safety in Maryland, the Center focuses on the following activities:  collaboration among hospital participants to learn specific process improvements, education of health care providers, voluntary confidential reporting to establish best practices, and research to help implement safer practices.  Click here to learn more about the Maryland Patient Safety Center.

Hospital Performance Measures

To view hospital performance measures for all reporting Maryland hospitals, click on the button below. The measures currently available through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services include heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention. More indicators will be added over the next several months.

What Consumers Should Know About Hospital Performance Measures

Individuals have different needs and hospitals have different strengths. This website provides another source of information for consumers to use to frame questions they can raise with physicians and hospitals to help them and their families choose the right hospital.

This information is a tool to advance consumer education, and should not be used to rank or compare hospitals. There is no one “best” hospital that can be identified from these data. This information merely reports “what” happened; it doesn’t try to explain “why” it happened.

Also, the data are nearly one year old, and thus does not necessarily reflect a hospital’s current practice. Therefore, consumers should not draw conclusions based solely on the information provided here.

The Office of Health Care Quality

The Office of Health Care Quality (OHCQ) is the regulatory agency within the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene charged with monitoring the quality of care among Maryland’s health care facilities and community residential programs. The office licenses and certifies the health care facilities and takes complaints. To make a complaint about a health care facility, call 1-877-402-8218.

In 2004, the OHCQ implemented Maryland Hospital Patient Safety Program regulations. The program requires hospitals to report all adverse events to the Office that result in serious disability or death. The hospital also must submit a detailed report of the cause of the adverse event and must outline procedures it has put in place to avoid a recurrence. The OHCQ analyzes the reports from hospitals, sends alerts where they see trends, and makes an annual report to the legislature.

Click here for more information about the OHCQ.