How safe is your hospital?

Consumer Reports magazine: August 2012 | Our new Ratings find that some are riskier than others

Hospitals should be places you go to get better, but too often the opposite happens.  Infections, surgical mistakes, and other medical harm contribute to the deaths of 180,000 hospital patients a year, according to projections based on a 2010 report from the Department of Health and Human Services. Another 1.4 million are seriously hurt by their hospital care. And those figures apply only to Medicare patients. What happens to other people is less clear because most hospital errors go unreported and hospitals report on only a fraction of things that can go wrong.  Read more