A new report from the Commonwealth Fund’s Commission on a High Performance Health System examines health care access, cost, quality, and outcomes across 306 areas in the U.S. that are referred to in the report as “hospital referral regions.”

The report tracks 43 health care indicators across four dimensions of hospital performance:  access, prevention and treatment, costs, and potentially avoidable hospital use.  Not surprisingly, the report concludes that performance in all of these factors varies widely across the country and in general is best in the northeast and upper midwest.

Read a summary of the report and download an executive summary, the entire report, a set of charts, and a presentation on the report here, on the Commonwealth Fund’s web site.   Interactive maps and access to more detailed and region-specific and comparative data can be found here.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has unveiled what it calls “the nation’s most comprehensive online directory for patients to find reliable information on the quality of health care provided by physicians and hospitals in their communities.” The foundation further describes its new directory as “a map-based listing of health care performance measurement resources available across the country. The directory links to 197 free and publicly available reports in 46 states, as well as 27 reports with information on the performance of physicians and hospitals nationwide.” Learn more here.