No one wants to be a patient, but if you are—or if you have a family member who is—it would be nice to know what to ask and how best to be treated well.

Asking questions, being involved, and staying informed are all good characteristics of patients who have better outcomes. Health care is not limited to diagnoses, drugs, devices, and prognoses. More than just healing, long term quality of life should be the goal of the entire team, including the patient.

Patients want to live a long, happy and healthy life. The best way to do this is to avoid illness, which patients can do with prevention because 80% of disease is self-inflicted. When prevention fails, or the 20% of unstoppable episodic illness kicks in, patients should seek the best care.

The “healthcare quality,” is measured by many of the “payers,” including Medicare. Measuring quality in healthcare has traditionally been difficult for the average patient. Roadside billboards, commercials, displays at major sporting events, fancy logos, name changes and image building campaigns do not relate to quality.

Confusingly, some heavily advertised metrics rely on a combination of subjective reputational and lagging objective measures. Most consumers don’t know enough about the sources of information to understand which ratings are meaningful to outcomes. Arguably, hospital quality star ratings created by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) are the best information for potential patients to rate hospital mortality, safety, readmission, patient experience, and timely/effective care. These five categories combine 47 of the more than 100 measures CMS publicly reports. A 2017 JAMA article by lead author Dr. Ashish Jha said:

“Found that a higher CMS star rating was associated with lower patient mortality and readmissions. It is reassuring that patients can use the star ratings in guiding their health care seeking decisions given that hospitals with more stars not only offer a better experience of care, but also have lower mortality and readmissions.”

Developing more 5-star hospitals is not only better and safer for patients but also will save resources by avoiding expensive complications and suffering.

Asking why a test is being done, inquiring about the results, and getting an understandable answer are the minimum questions and actions of a good healthcare interaction.

Understanding who will be caring for you is an important matter, since it could be the physician, physician’s assistant, or nurse practitioner—all possibilities these days—either alone or in combination. Having a program and asking the right “who,” question helps everyone communicate better. Clearly, having a team with individual roles is the way modern care is going. You just need to know who is on your team and their respective function.

Equally important is having everyone on the team understand and share your history, current and past medications, and your overall desires about the diagnosis, plans for treatment, and prognosis, as well as possible. Clear communication between the patient and the team avoids a multitude of problems.

Other resources are typically available, including social service and therapies of all types: physical, occupational, speech, dietary, and even a pharmaceutical review by a knowledgeable pharmacist. Everyone is anxious to assist and when coordinated by your primary care physician, everything seems to go better.

Asking for a review of the first explanation is not uncommon and, in fact, makes great sense when you are stressed out due to your illness, in an uncomfortable and relatively new location and generally in auditory shutdown. The trauma of being admitted or discharged from a hospital is difficult. Adding to the blur of moment are, typically, new medications, perhaps a surgery, a new and different sleeping and eating environment—all justify a review of the explanation as often as needed. No doubt everyone is better off when we all know our roles. Also, having a team with members who have different skills is healthy and will provide a better outcome. The team simply needs to be coordinated, have a plan, and be cohesive. And the patient must be personally involved.