Planning surgery anytime soon? Georgians can now check how hospitals in their area rate in terms of user satisfaction, a major step toward consumers one day shopping for health care as they would for a household appliance.

As a group, Georgia hospitals rank slightly above the national average on patient satisfaction, according to a recently expanded Web site from the federal agency that runs Medicare.

Discharged patients, randomly selected, were asked to give a number grade to their hospital care on a scale of 1 to 10. The surveys also asked how well nurses and doctors communicated with patients, and whether they received adequate information about their care after discharge.

There's wide variation in the scores of Atlanta area hospitals. Piedmont Hospital did best, with 78 percent of its patients rating it a 9 or 10. The hospital in Buckhead, along with affiliated facilities in Fayetteville and Jasper, took three of the four top positions among hospitals in a 23-county area.

At the bottom were two hospitals, in Winder and Monroe, owned by a Florida company.

"We get this information before we buy a car or a personal computer," said Jim Frogue, state project director at Newt Gingrich's Center for Health Transformation. "A little bit of knowledge [in health care] can save our lives."

Patient advocates say the Web site — www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov — marks a significant milestone in the long-running quest to give the public more health care information.

Consumers' access to such health care information has historically been limited. Federal officials say the site, from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), can help drive hospitals to improve, while arming patients with data to help them pick the best places to get care.

"My aspiration would be for this to permeate the entire health care system," said Michael Leavitt, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which includes CMS. The agency, on www.medicare.gov, also offers comparisons of nursing homes, dialysis centers and home health agencies.

It's the first time that patients' perspectives have been presented in a standardized way, said Lisa McGiffert, policy analyst with Consumers Union, publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

"This is a really good start," she said. "The hospitals are going to pay attention, especially the low performers."

The Medicare site also contains data on appropriate procedures for treating conditions, such as pneumonia or heart failure, and how the hospital fares on that measure. So a person facing hernia surgery could compare hospitals not just on customer satisfaction, but on the percentage of patients that received a preventative antibiotic before a surgical procedure.

The Web site should not be the only tool a patient uses to pick a hospital, federal officials say.

The data aren't perfect, experts note. Figures on patient satisfaction are somewhat dated, derived from patients discharged from October 2006 to June 2007. But McGiffert says, "Some information is better than no information."

The patients surveyed were 18 and older. Specialty children's facilities such as Children's Healthcare of Atlanta weren't questioned.

Several large local hospitals, such as Northside Hospital and Grady Memorial Hospital, don't have patient satisfaction data on the site, though that should change by next year's listing. Medicare will link participation in the surveys to a payment increase to hospitals. That could mean millions of dollars to some hospitals who choose not to share data.

The Georgia hospitals' average on patient satisfaction was 65 percent, two percentage points higher than the national mark.

Medical providers have traditionally fought the release of such information, experts say. "Hospitals have always known among each other which facilities are higher quality and lower quality," Frogue said. "The right for you to know is greater than the right for the hospital to keep it secret."

Local hospitals with high marks on patient satisfaction said the results reflect their focus on customer service. Susan Osborne, vice president of service excellence for Piedmont Healthcare, said that for Piedmont hospitals, "It's about putting the patient and family first."

Added Alan Dubovsky of Saint Joseph's Hospital, which ranked No. 2 in patient satisfaction: "We are always looking at ways to improve."

Some Atlanta area hospitals with the lowest patient satisfaction said their scores will be higher by the time the next survey appears. CEOs of both Barrow Regional Medical Center in Winder and Walton Regional Medical Center in Monroe — hospitals owned by Florida-based Health Management Associates — said recently they had already been working to improve services when the figures were released.

Consumers Union's McGiffert notes the Medicare listings offer little on patient "outcomes" — whether patients live or die, whether they get better, whether they get an infection or if medication errors are made.

Medical outcomes are difficult to compare because of the differences in conditions of patients, said Bob Bornstein, chief quality officer at Emory Healthcare.

Georgia's Department of Community Health, meanwhile, plans a Web site launch in October that will contain quality and cost data, including on nursing homes, personal care homes, and dialysis centers, as well as hospitals. It will allow Georgians to check the price of a prescription drug at various pharmacies in their area.

The Georgia agency plans eventually to include hospital infection rates in its data.

The biggest billpayer of health care, the federal government, is moving toward tying its financial clout — with about $400 billion in annual Medicare spending — to medical quality, and paying more for better care.

"I believe we will begin to see hospital administrator compensation linked to improvement of this data," Leavitt said. "And we'll begin to see an entirely new generation of involved consumers."