CMS Launches Online Overall Quality Star Ratings for Hospitals

Another 937 hospitals, or more than 20 percent, were not assigned a rating. The ratings include measures for care provided when treated for heart attacks and pneumonia, as well as hospital-acquired infections. Medicare does factor in the health of patients when comparing hospitals, though not as much as some hospitals would like.

“Many prominent hospitals that are in the top echelon of other quality rating reports, and handle the most complex procedures and patients, may receive 1 or 2 stars (out of a possible 5), indicating that they have the poorest quality in comparison to all other hospitals”.

A survey by Vizient, a member-owned hospital organization focused on quality and performance, supports the notion that major teaching hospitals got disproportionately low grades.

Only two Florida hospitals, Sarasota Memorial and the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, earned five stars from CMS.

CMS says it will assess public feedback to potentially adjust the methodology for calculating the star ratings, but also points out that the ratings have received positive reviews from many stakeholders, and that research has confirmed the accuracy of the program.

Last week, in an analysis created to anticipate and blunt criticism, Medicare reported that 102 hospitals would be given five stars, 934 would receive four stars, 1,770 would get three stars and 133 would get just one star. Another 18, including Englewood Community Hospital, earned four stars, according to CMS. We want to work with CMS and the Congress to fix the hospital star ratings so that it is helpful and useful to both patients and the hospitals that treat them. “Ten of our 13 hospitals rated by CMS rank at three stars or higher”. Another 723 hospitals, or almost 16 percent, have two-star ratings.

“Hospitals that reported on the majority of metrics tended to get one, two or three stars”, says Dr. Janis Orlowski, chief healthcare officer of the Association of American Medical Colleges, “Hospitals that reported on less than 40 percent of the metrics accounted for nearly half of those that got five stars”.

Almost half the hospitals – 1,752 – received an average rating of three stars. Almost one out of five US hospitals – 934 – could not be rated because they treat such small numbers of patients the government couldn’t reliably grade them.

Children’s Medical Center was not rated, because Medicare it said it didn’t have enough data to evaluate it.

The government said in a statement that it has been using the same type of rating system for other medical facilities, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers, and found them useful to consumers and patients.

Among the agency’s responses to industry criticism are that “most” of the quality measures used in the ratings have already been adjusted to account for the illness-burden of the population, and that as far as the matter of making adjustments to account for sociodemographic characteristics, “We continue to work closely with the National Quality Forum and the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE), who is required by the IMPACT Act to study the effect of socioeconomic status on quality measures and payment programs based on measures”, the agency said.

In a statement, Rick Pollack, president of the American Hospital Association, called the new ratings confusing for patients and families.

“Health care consumers making critical decisions about their care can not be expected to rely on a rating system that raises far more questions than answers”. Nationwide, 4 percent of hospitals received one star. A number were in high-poverty areas, including two in Newark, N.J., and three in Detroit.