What are Performance Measures?

You expect certain things when you go to a hospital. You expect hospitals will help you feel better. You expect to be safe. To measure our hospitals, we use scientific studies that show the best way to treat patients who are in a hospital for certain problems – like heart attacks, heart failure, and pneumonia.

How can we learn about the care a hospital provides? We use performance measures. These measures are based on scientific studies. We obtain information from the claims that a hospital submits to external reporting agencies, such as the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services and use it to measure how a hospital actually provides care. Hospitals agree to have performance measures reported to the public. Learn more about these performance measures.

We provide information on how hospitals compare on performance measures to help you choose a hospital. But, we cannot count all the things that a hospital does. You should not make your choice only from this information.

BlueCompare is not meant to tell you which hospital you should select. This is a very personal choice. You should not decide based only on BlueCompare information.

For hospitals, here is what the BlueCompare Performance symbols mean:

	Exceeds expected performance compared to other hospitals.
	Meets expected performance compared to other hospitals.
	Does not meet expected performance compared to other hospitals.
	There is not enough data available to measure performance. Re-evaluations are conducted periodically.
	This hospital requested that the BlueCompare Performance symbol not be shown.

Why do some hospitals not have a BlueCompare Performance symbol?

We use performance measures only for general acute care hospitals. You will not see a BlueCompare Performance symbol for specialty hospitals like children’s, mental health, or rehabilitation facilities. Here is a list of hospital types we do not review:

Behavioral Health Facility	Pediatric Hospital	Residential Treatment Center
Cancer Center	Psychiatric Hospital	Subacute Care Hospital
Partial Day Psychiatric	Rehabilitation Facility	Substance Abuse Facility

Additionally, we do not display a Performance symbol for general acute care hospitals that are new to the network.