What are your chances of living through a heart procedure at your local hospital? Maybe the federal government just made it a little easier to find out. 

The Department of Health and Human services released a report of 41 hospitals nationwide, ranking them on their death rates for heart patients, grouping them as above, at or below the national average for 30-day survival rates after heart attack or hearth failure. There's little more information available on the HHS website, but officials say they hope to add more data as it is gathered. 

But hospital administrators say the data can be misleading, and that death rates can be skewed by the sort of patients individual hospitals admit. One medical officer told the New York Times that he believed their death rate was "a statistical anomaly related to hospice-type patients."

However, the data is a start for prospective patients, HHS officials said. The rankings are an effort to bring more useful information to help people make health-care decisions. HHS secretary Michael Leavitt said the data constituted "a go-kart" that the department eventually hoped to turn into a "Formula One race car." 

The HHS website linked above is searchable by state, county and zip code. Not all hospitals are ranked, but several in the Detroit Metro area are.