BehindTheMedspeak: HospitalCompare.com — Is your hospital a death trap?

After many years of resistance, not just passive but actively fueled by many millions of lobbying dollars in Washington, D.C., the antediluvian hospital industry has been dragged kicking and screaming into 21st-century daylight by order of the United States government.

On HospitalCompare.com, for the first time, anyone can easily get access to any hospital's data on how it stacks up in 17 widely accepted quality measures in treating heart attacks, heart failure and pneumonia.

The website went live earlier today.

Now, before you go off and start looking to see why things went so well — or poorly — the last time you were in Elsewhere General or Little Angels of the Night, consider that the numbers you're going to find on the new site are quite limited in terms of some very important measures, such as mortality rates from cardiac surgery.

Nevertheless, it's a start.

All but 60 of the nation's 4,200 general hospitals are "voluntarily" turning over data for the Hospital Compare website.

I'm reminded here of Lee Iacocca's earnest commercials for Chrysler after he took over the then-moribund company: he told us how devoted to our safety Chrysler was.

This is the very same man who, as a Ford executive, fought tooth-and-nail against mandatory seat belts, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and the crippling and maiming of millions more who continued for decades to ride in the Big Three's death traps.

So don't tell me about "voluntary" or its equivalent.

Only the big foot of the U.S. government pressed against the neck of the hospital business — specifically, the cash register that receives Medicare funding —

enabled this miraculous "voluntary" reporting to happen.

One more thing: it's rather irrational, the basis of how people come to believe a hospital — or a doctor — is any good or not.

Here's a true story.

Back when I was at UCLA Hospital on the anesthesiology faculty, Los Angeles magazine came out with an issue that purported to list the best doctors in Los Angeles.

I almost fell over laughing when I saw that the top family doctor in Los Angeles was none other than... Tom Morgan, M.D.

Why was this so funny to me?

1) Tom Morgan was last — yes, last — in his UCLA Medical School class the year before I graduated. Truly, the old joke, "What do you call someone who finishes last in his medical school class? Doctor." was no joke.

2) Tom lived just below me in the small, six-unit Spanish-style apartment building in which I resided. He drove his Ferrari around, revved it up at all hours in the driveway, had a wacked-out flight attendant girlfriend who did dope all day waiting for him to get home, and himself did all manner of drugs. A total doofus. Yet there he was, the best of the best in Los Angeles magazine.

The reason?

He returned his phone calls promptly and had an excellent office and bedside manner.

His patients mistook his earnestness for knowledge.

Caveat emptor.