Does your local hospital place more cardiac stents than others? Do more of its patients leave the emergency room without being seen? Does it have a high level of C-section births? These questions and others are relatively easy to answer thanks to a data gold mine kept by the obscure California Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development. It doesn't matter if your hospital is public, nonprofit or for-profit, data on its patients and services are available online.

Charles Ornstein, senior reporter at ProPublica and president of AHCJ's board of directors, will guide you through using the data to answer those questions and more.