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The Utah Department of Health used AHRQ's MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵ("My Own Network, powered by AHRQ") software tool to create the online "Utah Hospital Comparison Report," which provides an immediate way for the public to review data from different sources about hospital care in the State. As a result of MONAHRQ, the "Utah Hospital Comparison Report" evolved from a series of static data pages to an interactive tool that provides data in a variety of easy-to-read formats.

MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵallows organizations to generate a health care reporting Web site using their own hospital discharge data, results from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid's "Hospital Compare," and results from AHRQ's CAHPSâ„¢ (Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems) Hospital Survey (often referred to as HCAHPS or Hospital CAHPS). Since the organizations create and host the site themselves, they can choose how it will be used by the public.

Keely Cofrin Allen, PhD, Director of the Office of Health Care Statistics at the Utah Department of Health, says, "We're extremely pleased with the new hospital comparison report. We've been able to publish a lot more data using maps and rates by county and geographic region, with no extra effort."

Using MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵalso provides significant administrative savings. "MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵhas reduced by half the time it used to take to build the static data tables under the old process," Allen says. "I think the MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵtool is brilliant and the residual resource savings from an office manager point of view are enormous."

The online report compares the performance of Utah hospitals on measures such as patient safety and average charges. The report also shows maps of county rates of readmissions, hospitals' adherence to guidelines for recommended care, and patient satisfaction. Patients can use the report to evaluate health care facilities. Health care professionals, policymakers, and legislators can use the information to discuss ways to improve health care quality and safety while lowering costs.

The report is organized so that readers can find the type of information and amount of detail that interests them. One section, "Hospital Quality Ratings," shows which hospitals performed better than average, average, or below average when compared with all Utah hospitals for conditions such as heart attacks or procedures such as obstetrical delivery using medical instruments. Another section, "Detailed Quality Statistics," provides more in-depth information about the ratings.

The "Average Hospital Charges" section lists the number of patients with a specific condition and average charges for treating them. The "Maps of Avoidable Hospital Stays" section shows the hospitalization rates by county for conditions such as diabetes that can be potentially managed in outpatient care settings.

More information about MONÂÜÀòÊÓƵcan be found at . Utah's "Hospital Comparison Report" is available at .