Efficient Frontier Hospital Ratings
A searchable database of hospital quality ratings that compares against the US government’s Hospital Compare system
The Efficient Frontier Hospital Rating System scores more than 3,700 individual hospitals using a method that addresses some of the limitations underlying the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ Hospital Compare ratings.
To provide relevant hospital comparisons, this website offers three major criteria choices below: size, teaching status, and patient socioeconomic status. This allows you to divide the full national list into groups of peer hospitals with similar characteristics. The system then calculates each hospital’s score and rating based on its performance relative to that group. These results are based on the same data used in the February 2019 release of the Hospital Compare ratings.
This system is based on research described by Chicago Booth’s Dan Adelman in his paper “An Efficient Frontier Approach to Scoring and Ranking Hospital Performance.”
Look up your hospital’s rating
Check or uncheck any combination of these three criteria. Hospitals will be grouped, scored, and rated based on your selections.
Group hospitals by their number of beds:
- Critical access: Up to 25 beds—specially designated hospitals in rural areas
- Large: 400+ beds
- Medium: 100–399
- Small: Less than 100
Group hospitals by whether they use a significant number of residents and medical-school students to help with patient care. Teaching hospitals also tend to participate in medical research, which often involves treating patients with more complex health conditions.
Group hospitals by their number of patients covered by both Medicare and Medicaid using a five-point rating system:
- 5: Most low-income patients
- 4, 3, 2: Fewer low-income patients
- 1: Fewest low-income patients
Disclaimer: This site is intended only as a demonstration of the method developed in the paper “An Efficient Frontier Approach to Scoring and Ranking Hospital Performance” to provide a comparison against the CMS Hospital Compare Star Ratings. The information viewed on this site is not intended to be the only or primary means for evaluating hospital quality nor is it intended to be relied upon as advice or a recommendation or an endorsement about which hospitals to use or the quality of the medical treatment that a patient will receive from a hospital or other health care provider. Individuals are solely responsible for any and all decisions with respect to their medical treatment. Neither the University of Chicago nor its affiliates are responsible for any damages or costs that may be incurred as a result of using this site.
comparison criteria: hospital size, teaching status & socioeconomic rating
More details:
- Request a deeper breakdown of the data underlying an individual hospital's scores as calculated by the Efficient Frontier Hospital Rating System
- See technical notes on how these scores are calculated
- View alternative denominators used in calculation of safety-of-care scores
- Send questions or comments about the system to hospital-ratings@chicagobooth.edu
What are the Efficient Frontier Hospital Ratings?
Developed by Chicago Booth’s Dan Adelman, the Efficient Frontier Hospital Rating System is designed to reflect each hospital’s performance according to how well it meets the needs of patients relative to other hospitals. Click here to read more about how the system works, as well as why its ratings may differ from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ ratings.
Dan Adelman Explains the Efficient Frontier Hospital Rating System
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