Hospitals to Reveal Death Rates

The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to post report cards on hospital death rates for heart attacks and heart failure.

Officials say they hope to shame high-risk hospitals into doing better.

The information, which had been kept secret until now, will be posted in June on the CMS Web site, Hospital Compare (hospitalcompare.hhs.gov), USA Today said Wednesday.

More than a dozen hospitals shared their confidential Medicare death-rate report cards with the newspaper.

USA Today said heart attack death rates between July 2005 and June 2006 ranged from 12.3 percent at New York-Presbyterian to 18 percent at University Hospital in Cincinnati. Heart failure death rates ranged from 8.4 percent at New York-Presbyterian to 12.4 percent at AtlantiCare Medical Center in Atlantic City.