Choosing a Safe, High Quality Hospital for Care

At Winter Haven Hospital we promise that you will receive care that is safe, uses best practices, meets your expectations and is efficient.

Safe Care:

Ways you can make your hospital stay safer:

  • Ask questions and take notes for care at home
  • Insist that anyone entering your room wash hands
  • Insist that anyone examining you, providing medicines, treatments or transporting you checks your arm band and asks your name and birth date
  • Use our Condition H (Help) hot line if you need it (link to Condition H)
  • Compare the quality of care in our hospital with the nation, state and local hospitals www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov or www.floridahealthfinder.gov
Learn as much as you can about your condition and how to care for yourself.

Effective Care:

Data comparing hospitals is available through many internet sites. Some things you should know about the data before you begin your search:

  • Data comparing "complications" counts conditions present on admission such as diabetes and chronic lung disease as part of the complication rate. This data is often too inclusive to be useful for comparison.
  • Mortality rates are influenced by the type of services offered by a hospital (trauma and open heart surgery are offered by hospitals that take care of sicker patients).  Mortality rates are also influenced by the age of patients served.
  • The best data compares information obtained by reviewing records of individual patients using standard measures.
  • Some of the best information web sites are:

Use these links to find out more about the quality of services offered at Winter Haven Hospital.

Patient Satisfaction with Care:

Data comparing patient satisfaction with hospitals is available using this weblink

Data comparing services can be found at any of the links below.

Clinical Services:

Care for Patients Receiving Rehabilitation

  • Inpatient rehabilitation

Care of Patients with Heart Disease (click here to learn more about Measuring the Quality of Cardiovascular Surgery)

  • Pacemakers
  • Coronary artery bypass surgery
  • Valve replacement surgery
  • Coronary artery interventions

Florida Health Statistics

Accurate data comparing hospitals is available in either of these websites:

"The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) makes available data on hospital prices and performance on their Internet Web site at http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/CompareCare/. Pricing and performance data provided by AHCA are a compilation of charges for the average patient and your bill may vary from the average depending upon the severity of your illness and your individual care needs."

Comparative quality data available through http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/CompareCare/.

This same data contains information about complications that may be misleading to consumers seeking to compare quality among hospitals. Conditions that were present on admission to the hospital are included as if they were complications of care at the hospital. For example, "post-operative hip fractures" includes patients who broke a hip as a result of an automobile accident. "Infections related to medical care" includes patients who come to the hospital with infections developed in the community.

Warning to Consumers

Comparative quality data available through http://www.floridahealthfinder.gov/CompareCare/ contains information about complications that may be misleading to consumers seeking to compare quality among hospitals. Conditions that were present on admission to the hospital are included as if they were complications of care at the hospital. For example,"post-operative hip fractures" includes patients who broke a hip as a result of an automobile accident. "Infections related to medical care" includes patients who come to the hospital for infections developed in the community.