We welcome the controversy sparked by this week’s New England Journal of Medicine article and reported by the New York Times regarding the hospital intensity data published by the Dartmouth Atlas and used in Consumer Reports hospital ratings.

It is our hope that this encourages U.S. hospitals and doctors to make better information available on the quality, costs, and results of various types of medical treatments so that consumers can make better choices.

For decades the independent studies conducted by the Dartmouth Atlas have been raising concerns that hospitals in some regions of the country used two or three times the medical and financial resources than those in other regions on treating Medicare patients with chronic diseases, with no noticeable increase in life span or quality of life.

These studies attracted widespread support and little comment from hospitals that did not perform well until recently, when the Obama administration and others have considered using the information to adjust payment rates. Then, suddenly, vocal critics have emerged.

Here at Consumer Reports, we still feel that the Atlas data shines a light on an issue that consumers should be aware of when choosing a hospital—and we're not the only ones. There is little or no data to support the idea that very intense hospital treatment for chronic diseases, even at the end of life, benefits patients. Most hospitals and doctors resist collecting data on patient outcomes or making their data public. For example, we recently added certain hospital infection measures to our hospital ratings and found that despite a rash of state laws and the opportunity for hospitals in any state to report their infection rates to the Leapfrog organization, only a minority of hospitals have been willing to do so.