The following websites provide data and information on the quality and safety of hospital and physician care in Massachusetts.

• Board of Registration in Medicine website contains profiles of all licensed Bay State physicians, including their education, training, experience, and any actions the Board has taken. http://profiles.massmedboard.org/MA-Physician-Profile-Find-Doctor.asp                                                                           >>The Quality and Patient Safety Division newsletter, FIRST Do No Harm, is a  vehicle for sharing quality andpatient safety initiatives of Massachusetts healthcare facilities and the work of the Quality and Patient Safety Division and Committee.
• Department of Public Health/MassDAC Cardiac Surgery Studies provides information about the relative performance of cardiac surgery programs. Hospital-specific mortality rate data is provided for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery and Percutaneous Coronary Intervention (PCI, often called angioplasty). The website's reports are provided by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health under contract with the Massachusetts Data Analysis Center (Mass-DAC) of the Department of Health Care Policy at Harvard Medical School. www.massdac.org
• Hospital Compare offers information on how well hospitals care for patients who have certain medical conditions or are undergoing surgical procedures. The site also provides patient satisfaction survey results from recent hospital stays. Hospital Compare was created by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), the Department of Health and Human Services and other members of the Hospital Quality Alliance (HQA). www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov
• Massachusetts Health Quality Partners (MHQP) provides reliable information to help physicians improve the quality of care they provide to their patients, and helps consumers take an active role in making informed decisions about their healthcare, particularly about physicians and physician groups. www.mhqp.org
• MyHealthCareOptions is a healthcare information resource provided by the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council. It contains data and information on hospital quality,  safety performance measures and costs. http://hcqcc.hcf.state.ma.us/
• The Joint Commission is an independent, not-for-profit organization that accredits and certifies more than 17,000 healthcare organizations and programs in the United States. Joint Commission accreditation and certification is recognized nationwide as a symbol of quality that reflects an organization's commitment to meeting certain performance standards. Every acute care hospital in Massachusetts undergoes Joint Commission accreditation reviews. Quality Check® is The Joint Commission's search engine to locate healthcare organizations in the United States. Among the information provided on this website are:
  -  Accreditation Quality Reports that provide detailed information about an organization's performance and how it compares to similar organizations;
  - The organization's accreditation decision; and
  - The effective dates of the accreditation award.     www.qualitycheck.org.

The websites below offer information about organizations and programs to improve the quality and safety of healthcare services in Massachusetts and beyond.

• Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI)) is an independent not-for-profit organization helping to lead the improvement of healthcare throughout the world. IHI works to accelerate improvement by building the will for change, cultivating promising concepts for improving patient care, and helping healthcare systems put those ideas into action. www.ihi.org
• Massachusetts Coalition for the Prevention of Medical Errors is a public-private partnership whose mission is to improve patient safety and eliminate medical errors in Massachusetts. The Coalition's membership includes consumer organizations, state agencies, hospitals, professional associations for physicians, nurses, pharmacists, long-term care workers, as well as health plans, employers, policymakers, and researchers. The Coalition leverages the efforts of all of these organizations to accomplish the shared goal of improving patient safety. The Coalition promotes a systems-oriented approach to improving patient safety, identifying the causes of medical errors, and developing and supporting implementation of strategies for prevention. www.macoalition.org
• Masspro is one of the leading performance improvement organizations in the United States, dedicated to advancing healthcare quality. For over 20 years, Masspro has been the Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (QIO) for Massachusetts, working to improve the quality of healthcare provided to Medicare beneficiaries and to teach Medicare patients about their rights and protections under the program. www.masspro.org
• National Patient Safety Foundation is a resource for individuals and organizations committed to improving the safety of patients. NPSF  is unwavering in its determined and committed focus on uniting disciplines and organizations across the continuum of care, championing a collaborative, inclusive, multi-stakeholder approach. www.npsf.org
• U.S. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's (AHRQ) website includes access to clinical information, research findings, consumer/patient healthcare information, quality and patient safety information, data and surveys. www.ahrq.gov/
  
• WhyNotTheBest.org was created and is maintained by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation working toward a high performance U.S. health system. It is a free resource for healthcare professionals interested in tracking performance on various measures of healthcare quality. The site enables organizations to compare their performance against that of peer organizations, against a range of benchmarks, and over time. Case studies and improvement tools spotlight successful improvement strategies of the nation's top performers.  www.whynotthebest.org