At Consumer Reports we've been rating health products and services for over 70 years including treadmills, supplements, HMOs and gyms. More recently we've added Treatment Ratings for hundreds of conditions, Best Buy Drugs and Natural Medicine Ratings.

Health is part of our mission and because the health marketplace is complicated it often serves up differing opinions about what choices are best. To help you make decisions, you need clear information that’s free of advertising, conflicts of interest and other types of bias. With big money behind virtually every aspect of your health care, you need no-nonsense and trustworthy information to help you be a savvy health care consumer and to help you communicate more effectively with your doctor.

That's why we've created the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center. The Health Ratings Center will collaborate with top researchers and world-class experts on topics ranging from hospital safety and quality to maternity care and prevention. With these experts, the Center will analyze and assess data and information, then present it in a visual rating or comparison you can use when making important health care decisions.

The first project for The Health Ratings Center is a web tool based on the Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care data on the inpatient care of patients with severe chronic illnesses. As I've written about before, more treatment isn’t always the best option, and this tool allows you to compare how much care you’ll get at hospitals where you live.