Web site has info
on hospitals, nursing homes

A new Web site is available to help residents obtain information about hospitals, nursing homes and home-care agencies and make better health-care decisions.

The Healthcare Association of Hawaii's Patient Safety Task Force and Hawaii Health Information Corp. developed the Web site, www.hhic.org .

They said the goal of the Web pages, "Patient Safety: Making Healthcare Safer," is to make residents smarter health-care consumers and safer patients.

The Web site contains information to prepare families when a member must be hospitalized. It also provides up-to-date information on patient safety, with links to regulatory agencies that protect health-care consumers and to sites where they can register complaints.

A link also is provided to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, which reports on health-care quality in Hawaii's nursing homes and Medicare-certified home-care agencies. They also report on Medicare-covered services.

The Web site also offers a comprehensive review of medical and scientific literature on patient-safety practices, including the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality safety indicators and data, comparing Hawaii with national benchmarks.

National patient-safety goals of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and compliance of Hawaii hospitals are included.

The Patient Safety Task Force has distributed more than 5,000 consumer-education brochures entitled "Be Involved with Your Health Care: Tips to Help Prevent Medical Errors."