Physician and Hospitals Get a Grade

HealthGrades announced today that Yahoo! has selected the company as the exclusive provider of physician and hospital quality information for Yahoo! Health. HealthGrades’ physician quality reports and hospital ratings will be integrated into a variety of Yahoo! Health consumer health tools, including a new Yahoo! Health Physician Directory.

“Providing Yahoo! Health with HealthGrades content is a valuable opportunity for our company to provide millions more Americans with the critical information they need to choose the best quality medical care for themselves and their loved ones,” said Kerry Hicks, HealthGrades Chief Executive Officer.

Yahoo! Health will incorporate HealthGrades data into a new search-driven directory that will leverage numerous Yahoo! technologies and applications. The new physician directory will offer detailed physician and care provider pages, insurance coverage information, ratings and reviews from other users, comparable physician charts and health-focused Yahoo! Answer and Yahoo! Group modules.

“We are pleased to announce Yahoo! Health users will have access to HealthGrades trusted and independent health care quality information,” said Michael Yang, Yahoo! Health vice president and general manager. “Our goal is to empower individuals to make the best health decisions for themselves and their loved ones, and in teaming with HealthGrades, we can provide our customers with an easy-to-use physician directory that will offer detailed and trusted information at their fingertips.”

Through HealthGrades, millions of consumers access trusted quality information on more than 700,000 physicians and 5,000 hospitals nationwide, including consumer ratings on doctors and prescription drugs. HealthGrades operates the Web’s ninth most-trafficked ad-supported healthcare sites, according to comScore’s September rankings (with recent merger and acquisition activity taken into account), averaging more than 11 million visitors per month.