Fact Sheets

CMS EXPANDS INFORMATION AVAILABLE FOR CONSUMERS TO COMPARE THE QUALITY OF INPATIENT

Overview

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has expanded the amount of information available on its Hospital Compare Web site at http://www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov. 

As of July 2010, the Web site will now include updated information on 30-day mortality and readmissions rates for patients admitted to many inpatient hospitals for heart failure, acute myocardial infarction (heart attack), and pneumonia. The Web site also includes the debut of 10 new outpatient measures, including new measures that show whether outpatients who are treated for suspected heart attacks receive proven therapies that reduce mortality (such as an aspirin at arrival), are protected from surgical-site infections, and receive safe and efficient imaging services.

This information is shared with consumers and providers to improve the quality and transparency of care by giving the American public and healthcare professionals better access to important hospital data.  The new outpatient measures complement the inpatient clinical process and patient satisfaction measures already reported on Hospital Compare to promote increased scrutiny by hospitals of patient outcomes in the service of providing the right care for every patient, every time.

Updated Outcomes Data on Hospital Compare

CMS has been reporting information about the quality of care available at America ’s hospitals for several years.  Before 2007, this information was limited to inpatient “process of care measures,” which demonstrate how well hospitals follow generally recognized protocols believed to result in the best inpatient outcomes.  However, these “process of care measures” failed to capture how well patients fared as a result of these care protocols or the quality of care provided to patients in outpatient settings, such as emergency departments or outpatient surgery centers.

In 2007, CMS began reporting 30-day mortality rates for inpatient hospital stays related to heart attack and heart failure.  CMS added 30-day mortality rates for pneumonia-related stays in 2008.  Mortality rate measures are “outcome” measures because they give an indication of how the patient fared after the inpatient hospital stay. The rates themselves are actually predictions of how many patients will die within 30 days of discharge from the hospital (after having been admitted for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia), and are “risk adjusted” to account for extraneous influences, such as the difference among hospitals in the degree of their patients’ illnesses.  In 2009, CMS debuted a new set of measures on Hospital Compare that show 30-day all-cause readmissions for patients who had been admitted to the hospital for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia.  

To help consumers use outcomes data more effectively, CMS placed each hospital into one of three categories, based on their mortality or readmissions rates: “Better than U.S. National Rate,” “No Different than U.S. National Rate,” or “Worse than U.S. National Rate.”  The distribution of hospitals into each of these three categories is shown in Table 1, below.

Table 1. Outcome Measure Results for July 2010 Reporting

(July 2006-June 2009 Discharges)