Increasingly, health care reporters are getting and reporting national comparisons of health care systems. These comparisons attempt to show the quality of care at different hospitals, doctors and clinics. I’ve checked out two such comparisons that are hitting newspapers across the country in the past week.

One says it’s the first-ever state-by-state comparison of children’s health care. It was conducted by The Commonwealth Fund, a private group looking to improve health care, and it ranks each state based on numerous indicators, from percentages of kids who are insured to immunization rates and the average cost of insurance. Washington ranks 18th of 50 states. U.S. News and World Report reports today that the comparison shows wide variations in access to insurance and the likelihood of living long, health lives.

The other story I’m seeing is that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is running full page ads in newspapers across the country to promote its hospital comparison Web page. A story in the Seattle P-I shows a sample of the findings at three major Seattle area hospitals. The federal agency compares how most of the major hospitals in the country rate when it comes to responding to a variety of conditions, such as heart disease or infections.

We’ve reported in past years about how Central Washington Hospital stacks up against other hospitals in the state and the nation, and generally it’s done quite well. The latest feature of this comparison by the government agency that runs Medicare is a comparison of patient experiences, based on surveys of the patients who’ve been there. When this new feature was added last month, I called Central Washington Hospital to find out why they weren’t among the hospitals rated. Seems that a whole year of data hasn’t been gathered, but this information will be added, probably by the end of this year, they tell me. I’ll be checking again this winter, and reporting how our hospital rates in the eyes of its patients, compared to others across the nation.

In the meantime, it sure would be interesting to know if patients actually use this information to choose where they go, or even just to see how their own hospital rates compared with others. I’d love to hear from patients who do.