Trying to figure out specific hospitals’ safety records can be confusing and frustrating, but the federal government has a tool that might help because it rates hospitals on a star system designed to assess quality.

Arizona has five hospitals that this year earned the federal government’s top five-star quality rating and five that earned the lowest one-star assessment.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services makes star ratings on an annual basis using 46 hospital quality measures that include readmission rates, surgery complications, patient satisfaction, mortality and hospital-associated infections, including central line-associated bloodstream infections for hospitalized patients… read more >