Looking at a decade’s worth of nonemergency Medicare-patient hospital visits, Chicago Booth’s Devin G. The CMS got a C.īut the ratings have a lot of influence, starting with patient decisions. Researchers from Northwestern Medicine, Sound Physicians, the Council of Medical Specialty Societies, the University of Michigan, Washington University, and University Hospitals did their own analysis and gave their highest grade to US News & World Report, which got a B. But it received a B in the fall from Leapfrog and only three stars from the CMS. 3 hospital in the country by US News & World Report and received a top-5-percent designation from Healthgrades. The Johns Hopkins Hospital, for example, was, in 2019, ranked as the No. Healthgrades, a company that provides information on doctors and other health-care providers, issues an annual list called “America’s Best Hospitals,” highlighting those that it deems to be in the top 5 percent for overall clinical excellence, on the basis of clinical quality outcomes for 32 conditions and procedures.Įach of these reviewers uses mostly the same data but distinct methodologies, and the results they come up with can be very different. The Leapfrog Group, an independent health-care watchdog, biannually scores general acute-care hospitals with its Hospital Safety Grade, ranking states on the basis of the percentage of A-rated hospitals they have. “Find the Best Hospital for You” trumpets its website, advertising its guides for patients and caregivers. US News & World Report rates hospitals but also publishes a few annual rankings, including the best hospitals in the country, the best hospitals in each region, and the best for a few different specialties such as cancer care. Its online patient-focused Hospital Compare tool allows people to compare hospitals on the basis of their overall star ratings. It launched a star rating system in 2016 to provide more information about a hospital, including patient experience, complications and deaths, and value of care. The CMS rates a hospital’s quality of care using 51 measures centered around common, serious issues-such as heart failure and pneumonia-among Medicare patients who require hospitalization. More than half of respondents said they planned to use such ratings in the future. According to a 2018 Deloitte survey, 39 percent of respondents considered reputation when choosing a doctor, and nearly one-quarter said they had used a quality rating when choosing a doctor or hospital, up 5 percentage points from a 2013 survey. When it comes to seeking medical care, the impulse is no different. Whether they’re looking to get a meal at a local restaurant or buy a blender on Amazon, modern shoppers are often guided by the advice of professionals or other customers. Their research holds the promise of producing more-accurate measurements that could better inform the decisions of patients, hospitals, insurance companies, and the federal government-and of ultimately improving the hospital system, and public health more generally. Academic researchers have scrutinized the methodology to identify flaws in the CMS system, and to come up with ideas for modifying the ratings. As the health-care industry fights COVID-19 on multiple fronts, it’s worth taking a deep dive into the CMS’s ratings to understand how they affect the success or failure of a hospital. Of the four major hospital rating systems available to patients in the US, the CMS offers perhaps the most influential one. Ratings can guide patients’ decisions, shape negotiations between hospitals and insurance companies, and determine how much health-care providers get reimbursed by both the federal government and insurers. The pandemic has slashed hospital revenues, and hospitals with high ratings may advertise those heavily to attract non-COVID-19 patients and the dollars they bring with them. The news about ratings did not make a lot of headlines, and was quickly buried by stories about the public-health crisis.īut the release of the ratings was an important moment for patients looking up which facilities might provide the best care for nonemergency procedures-and for the health-care industry, which has billions of dollars at stake. The US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regularly releases star-system ratings for US hospitals, and did so in January 2020, on the cusp of the COVID-19 outbreak.

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