It seems as if they spring up every day: new web sites, rankings and listings to help patients find the “best” hospital and the “best” doctors. But U.S. hospitals are not subject to federal regulation, unlike in many other countries, and the only national oversight comes from Medicare and the Joint Commission, a nonprofit group which accredits and sets safety goals for 17,000 hospitals, a monumental task. So patients depend mostly on the hospitals themselves, which have their own internal safety and quality supervision, for answers.
