The Colorado Hospital Report Card is intended to provide the general public with clinical data that helps to measure the quality of healthcare in Colorado hospitals. The Colorado Hospital Report Card is a tool to help consumers make informed decisions about healthcare, and the report card should be used in conjunction with other tools that evaluate hospitals and physicians, such as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) Hospital Compare, which can be found at http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov/.

The quality measures that were selected for the Colorado Hospital Report Card are standardized to evaluate quality and clinical outcomes, and measure the performance of healthcare providers and hospitals. The data that is used for the quality measures comes from discharge claims data, which is data that is generated when patients are discharged from hospitals in order to charge for healthcare services. The data provides detailed information about the patient?s medical condition while they were hospitalized. The patient's personal information is not part of the database, which means that the patient cannot be identified based on the medical condition and outcome.

Discharge claims data is collected from all general hospitals in Colorado, and analyzed using statistical software. Individual hospitals are compared against the state average for each individual quality measure, and a score for each individual hospital is generated based on that comparison:

• If an individual hospital's score range falls into the same score area as the state average, then the hospital is not statistically different, which means the hospital does not have a better or worse score than other hospitals in Colorado for that individual quality measure.

• If an individual hospital's score range falls above the same score area as the state average, then the hospital is statistically higher, which means that the hospital has a worse score than other hospitals in Colorado for that individual quality measure.

• If an individual hospital's score range falls below the same score area as the state average, then the hospital is statistically lower, which means that the hospital has a better score than other hospitals in Colorado for that individual quality measure.

Statistical Significance is the probability that a result is not likely to be due to chance alone. In other words, there is a scientific reason why some hospitals have better or worse scores in comparison to others. The scientific explanation is likely due to the quality of healthcare in that individual hospital for the individual quality measure.