About Us - Values & Principles

Values Summary

• Shared Responsibility - Improved healthcare outcomes will happen when consumers, providers, educators and policy-makers exercise their responsibilities more completely.
• Respect and Privacy - We believe that the vast majority of people working in healthcare or seeking care are honest, caring, capable and trustworthy people. Respect also includes carefully protecting the privacy of personal health information.
• Trust and Disclosure of Prices - The public should have the ability to compare costs among healthcare providers and insurance plans.
• Honesty and Disclosure of Quality - The public should have the ability to compare quality across healthcare providers. We value transparency and continued expansion of publicly reported results.
• Consumer Satisfaction - Aggregate consumer ratings of care are an important part of public reporting. We encourage consumers to review such collective ratings, along with Quality reports and Prices.
• Brief, Understandable and Usable Reports - ConsumerHealthRatings.com will continue to seek out clear, accurate, short but helpful, conclusion-oriented information that the public can use to live healthier lives.
• Art and Science - Both compassion and quantified measures are required to achieve great health care. Information provided at ConsumerHealthRatings.com is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her physician.
• Commitment to the Institute of Medicine's Six Aims - We support health care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable, and appeal to Boards for greater accountability to reach these aims.
• Leadership - Whether citizen, Board member, health professional, manager, educator, or policy-maker, we need leaders from every walk of life to step onto the field and help shape the future of health care in the United States.

Values and Principles (Full Statement)

• Shared Responsibility - Improved healthcare outcomes will happen when everyone exercises their responsibilities more completely. Consumers will do what they can personally to live healthier lives, to use the health system appropriately and to educate themselves about quality of care. Healthcare providers will improve efficiency, increase accuracy, and display better adherence to recommended, evidence-based practices. Educators will use their skills to improve health literacy and support citizens' understanding of healthcare performance reports. Policy-makers will attend to the public's call for improvement and equal access to affordable care. The community at large will face up to special interests and weigh-in on the ethical debate about profit in health care.
• Respect and Privacy - We believe that the vast majority of people working in healthcare or seeking care are honest, caring, capable and trustworthy people. We believe that over-scrutinizing the masses (whether review of citizens' health information and claims, or by over-regulating providers) is extremely wasteful and counter-productive. Respect also includes carefully protecting the privacy of personal health information.
• Trust and Disclosure of Prices - The public should have the ability to compare costs among healthcare providers and insurance plans. Price disclosure helps build trust between the public and healthcare professionals. The current practice of deep-discounting by Medicare, Medicaid and private insurers results in huge cost-shifting practices, and makes true costs virtually unknowable.
• Honesty and Disclosure of Quality - The public should have the ability to compare quality across healthcare providers. We value transparency and continued expansion of publicly reported hospital results, to conditions well beyond heart care, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention, ultimately to include all payers for 80% of hospital admissions. We encourage expansion of ambulatory care and medical group measures, and support physician-specific performance reporting on a selected basis when patient mortality and other high costs are at stake. Reported results should be adjusted for patient risk factors, and every type of health care service should report meaningful quality measures in an honest, straightforward manner.
• Consumer Satisfaction - Aggregate consumer ratings of their experience of care, their providers, and their health plans are an important part of public reporting. We encourage consumers to review such collective ratings, along with Quality reports and Prices.
• Brief, Understandable and Usable Reports - The general consumer should not be required to be an amateur statistician, nor have a college degree, nor have to invest the time to read complicated 30-page reports, in order to get each type of information they need. ConsumerHealthRatings.com will continue to seek out clear, accurate, short but helpful, conclusion-oriented information that the public can use to live healthier lives.
• Art and Science - Both compassion and quantified measures are required to achieve great health care. Performance data without recognizing the importance of continuous healing relationships between patients and providers, lacks appreciation for the impact of illness and injury and lacks understanding of how health improvement is achieved. Compassion without hard measurement can result in purely emotional decisions that benefit one party to the detriment of the community as a whole. Information provided at ConsumerHealthRatings.com is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient/site visitor and his/her physician.
• Commitment to the Institute of Medicine's Six Aims - We support health care that is safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient, and equitable for all US populations, and appeal to Boards for greater accountability to reach these aims. This commitment includes support for universal access to care, better use of our healthcare dollars, and reduction of medical errors.
• Leadership - Whether citizen, Board member, health professional, manager, educator, or policy-maker, we need leaders from every walk of life to step onto the field and help shape the future of health care in the United States.

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