Performance Data Online for Area Hospitals

The Association of Health Care Journalists (AHCJ) unveiled a new searchable online database Monday containing hospital inspection records and detailed violation reports based off of complaints dating back to January 2011.

The new website, HospitalInspections.org, compiles inspection reports managed by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that have been digitized and made available to the public.

The database includes a number of Connecticut hospitals, including Stamford Hospital, but not Greenwich or Norwalk Hospitals. However, these Medicare "Hospital Compare" Web pages provide information about Stamford Hospital, Norwalk Hospital and Greenwich Hospital. Information on other hospitals can be looked up on this Web page.

Since some reports are still unaccounted for, the AHCJ cautions against using the database on its HospitalInspections website to compare hospitals, particularly across state lines.

Rather, “these reports can be helpful in pinpointing the problems recently identified at a particular hospital or in looking for hospitals that have been cited for a particular issue, such as medication errors or wrong-site surgery.”

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Use the searchable database above to view inspection results for Connecticut hospitals and find links to detailed reports.

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“The reports being released are those that detail what inspectors found when they responded to complaints about the care provided by these hospitals,” the HospitalInspections website states. “Inspectors document their findings on forms and hospitals have a chance to respond.”

The responses from the hospitals were not released digitally but copies can be obtained from the CMS by request, according to the AHCJ.

The reports do not include “long-term care hospitals,” such as rehabilitation or psychiatric facilities, but rather deal with “general acute-care hospitals,” or “what many people consider when they think of a hospital,” the website explains.

“They often have emergency rooms and care for patients who’ve had heart attacks, pneumonia, heart failure, etc. Critical access hospitals are typically much smaller and serve rural areas with no other options for many miles.”

David Gurliacci contributed to this article.