Sites for More Eyes

Medicare officials now have created http://www.mymedicare.gov/ , a gateway for Web-savvy beneficiaries and their family members to access these quality and pricing tools, along with personalized information on medical and benefits history. Beneficiaries can also compare costs and benefits of traditional Medicare with the program's alternative plans, based on their health status. They also can look for doctors and specialists in their area.

Pro: Medicare's prescription drug plan finder allows beneficiaries to shop for the best price. Medicare has worked out the kinks the system displayed when it was launched last fall. The site allows individuals to see how their current drug plan stacks up against other options.

Con: Quality data on physicians is lacking. Also, the Hospital Compare tool, while a handy resource on hospital quality, rates facility performance only on the following medical conditions: heart attack, congestive heart failure, pneumonia and surgical infection prevention.

What's ahead: Medicare officials are working on providing quality information on specialists, but its release is not expected soon.

Federal Employees Health Benefits Program

The FEHBP has for several years offered online cost and quality information on health plans and insurance carriers at http://www.opm.gov/insure/health/index.asp . During this fall's open enrollment season, 8 million federal workers, retirees and dependents will find they have more access to hospital and physician quality and cost data than ever before, but only from a subset of providers. At least 18 of the more than 100 carriers that contract with FEHBP will offer varying degrees of provider pricing on such procedures as delivering a baby (including doctor and hospital charges), replacing a knee, caring for asthma and at least nine others.

Pro: Federal workers will see provider-level pricing this open-enrollment season, complementing FEHBP'S current Web-based pricing and quality resources.

Con: Workers have to be proactive to chase down a lot of quality information. For provider-level prices, for example, workers must visit the site of each carrier to ferret out the information.

What's ahead: Making the site more interactive with real-time information on cost and quality in 2007.

Subscription-Based Services

Subimo, WebMD and a handful of other Internet companies have created Web-based tools that can deliver cutting-edge, consumer-friendly health information. The firms sell those tools to health plans and employers, which offer access to the products to their members and employees.

Unfortunately, the companies make available to other consumers only a fraction of its decision-support tools, some free, some at a price:

HealthGrades Inc.

HealthGrades ( http://www.healthgrades.com/ ) allows free access to its hospital ratings to see a particular hospital's performance for 29 common procedures. Each hospital is rated on how it performs each procedure based on death, complication and other rates, taking into account severity of different patients' illnesses. HealthGrades charges $17.95 for an in-depth quality and cost report on a hospital. The company sells reports on individual physicians for the same price, and medical cost reports on specific procedures are available for $7.95.

Subimo

Subimo offers its Healthcare Advisor tool to consumers directly at http://www.myhealthcareadvisor.com/ , which allows consumers to find quality information on most of the nation's hospitals for more than 100 common procedures and conditions. A medical encyclopedia is also available. Cost: $24 a year.

WebMD

WebMD ( http://www.webmd.com/ ) also provides great medical and personal health tools to consumers. Unfortunately, consumers can access its pricing and quality tools only through certain health plans or employers.