Did you know that picking the right hospital could save your life?

All hospitals are not created equal for every medical emergency.

Whether the emergency is a stroke, a high-risk birth, or a heart attack, you should know that it is worth doing whatever it takes to get to the right place.

So how can you go about learning which hospital is right for your medical needs?

Take some time to research hospitals on the Internet

Healthgrades.com ranks hospitals by specialty, as does The Leapfrog Group. You can discover which is the best place to have knee surgery in Topeka, Kansas, or the best place to have a baby in Washington, DC.

JointCommission.org lists hospitals that have certification for various medical specialties.

Hospitalcompare.hhs.gov has detailed information about procedures performed at different hospitals.

Be sure to ask the right questions.

If you are not able to locate the information you are seeking on the Internet, you will need to call the hospital’s quality office. Generally, the hospitals which perform a high number of a given procedure such as heart bypass surgery, hip replacement, usually have the best results.

What if there is an emergency?

This may sound unusual, but it can be quite possible to anticipate many emergencies.

Be sure to think about what emergencies are highly likely to occur in your family. Perhaps your spouse has an existing heart condition, or perhaps you have a high-risk pregnancy and are at risk of having a premature baby.

What you need to do first, is find out where an ambulance would take you if you dialed 911. If you decide that you want to go elsewhere, you may be out of luck. Generally you cannot persuade an ambulance driver to go to a stroke center if you’ve had a stroke, or to go to a children’s hospital if your child is injured.

But you can take it upon yourself to be an informed consumer and take time to check with the emergency service providers in your area to find which hospital you’d be taken to and see whether you’d be able to negotiate a different destination.

Back in October of 2007, my husband was having a major heart attack and the ambulance driver did ask him whether he wanted to go to Cooperstown or to Cobleskill.  Cooperstown was farther away, about 45 minutes, but is well known for its cardiac care, so my husband told the driver to take him there. This will not always be the case whereby you are asked where you want to be taken, that is why it is important that you research your options to see about the options for a different destination should the situation warrant that.