When it comes to getting the best hospital care, teaching hospitals have a stellar reputation, but, sadly, it’s not always deserved. While it’s true that these hospitals can be an excellent choice for newer procedures, such as stem cell implants, or complicated surgeries, such as an organ transplant, it’s a myth that teaching hospitals are better than nonteaching, community or specialty hospitals for all types of hospital care. Remember, a teaching hospital is first and foremost a school—it is affiliated with a medical school to provide teaching programs for medical students, interns (students still in training) and residents (doctors learning specialties).

Most people will be surprised to learn that a new report from Medicare shows that teaching hospitals are 10 times more likely than nonteaching hospitals to have preventable, high complication rates for significant problems such as punctured lungs, blood clots after surgery and bloodstream infections. What’s more, this disparity is not due to teaching hospitals treating patients with more serious medical conditions. The Medicare data were adjusted for the severity of the patients’ illnesses, so the disparities clearly do reflect a difference in quality of care.

Does this mean that you should avoid teaching hospitals? Absolutely not. But it does mean that you should do your homework if you or a loved one is planning to be hospitalized. My advice…

Consider the uniqueness of your condition. For most common surgical procedures, such as hysterectomies, gallbladder removals, lumpectomies and prostate surgery, community hospitals are often as good as or better than teaching hospitals. But if you have a more complicated problem, such as a rare form of cancer, or an ailment that your local doctors are having a hard time diagnosing, a teaching hospital is probably the place to go. These hospitals are also where you’ll end up if you are considering a clinical trial or need cutting-edge technology for a particularly troublesome condition, such as heart disease or Parkinson’s disease, that has not responded to standard treatment.

Compare hospitals. Complication rates in the new Medicare report are listed on a hospital-by-hospital basis on Medicare’s www.HospitalCompare.hhs.gov Web site. This great resource allows you to enter your zip code or hometown to find the hospitals in your area and compare their data with that of other hospitals. The Web site also covers outcomes for specific procedures, such as heart bypass and joint replacement.

Be wary of hype. In the past, a hospital’s reputation was often created by its public relations department, not by its outcome and complication rates. But the Medicare report, along with hospital outcome data published by many states (check with your state health department), is changing the way we consumers can make sound hospital choices. With this new information, we can choose doctors who are affiliated with the truly best hospitals and find facilities that excel in the problems we need fixed.