CMS Launches Quality Health Care Compare Tool for Consumers

As a follow-up to our previous blog on the Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has launched a more expansive tool to help consumers compare quality for a number of different provider types. 

On August 5, CMS announced a new quality “compare” finder tool embedded in a web portal, so consumers can easily assess information about the quality of care and services of health care providers. The new portal is geared to Medicare beneficiaries, but can be used by anyone, and provides helpful information about providers by specialty or by different types of facilities.

“These tools are new ways CMS is making sure consumers have information about health care quality and important information they need to make the best decisions about where to receive high-quality care,” said Dr. Don Berwick, CMS administrator, in a CMS statement. “These efforts are designed to also encourage providers to deliver safe, patient-centered care that consumers can rely on and will motivate improvement across our health care system.”

CMS also has updated its Hospital Compare website to include surgical infections as well as indicators regarding the extent to which hospitals protect their outpatients from infection. Other highlights include whether hospitals use proven therapies that reduce the risk of death on outpatients treated for suspected heart attacks.

“CMS wants consumers to have online tools available so they can act on information about where to receive high-quality care,” said Dr. Berwick. “These efforts are designed to also encourage providers to deliver safe, patient centered care that consumers can rely on and will motivate improvement across our health care system,” he added.

On the Hospital Compare website, CMS also has updated data for outcomes of inpatient hospital care.  Today’s update includes new 30-day mortality rates and 30-day readmissions rates for inpatients admitted with heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. These rates encompass three full years of claims data (from July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2010), according to CMS.

For example, the national 30-day mortality rates for heart attack have continued to decline this year.  The rate has fallen from 16.2% for the 2006 through 2009 period to 15.9% for the more recent 2007 through 2010 time period. Mortality rates for heart failure and pneumonia increased slightly over the same period, showing an increase from 11.2 to 11.3% for heart failure and 11.6 to 11.9% for pneumonia.

At the same time, the national 30-day readmission rates for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia showed small changes. The updated results from 2007 to 2010 for heart attack readmissions were slightly lower at 19.8% from 19.9% in the 2006 through 2009 period. On the flip side, rates for heart failure rose 0.3% to 24.8% and pneumonia readmission showed a 0.2% increase reaching 18.4%. 

Hospital Compare also includes 10 measures that capture patient experience with hospital care. After two years of reporting these patient experience measures, hospitals have shown modest but meaningful improvement on most experience measures. The degree of this improvement has been relatively uniform across most measures and hospitals. 

The website also contains 25 process-of-care measures and three children’s asthma care measures, as well as information about the volume of certain hospital procedures performed and conditions treated for Medicare patients and what Medicare pays for those services.

To learn more about this new tool:

• To log into the portal, click here. 
• To read the CMS press release, click here.

Several other comparison tools are available, including www.healthgrades.com. Many health plans and states offer similar resources. Some are free to consumers and some charge a fee. Another resource of quality related information is the national accreditation organizations such as the Joint Commission, NCQA and URAC. The new CMS tool is offered on a complimentary basis. 

As with any quality-ranking system, there are inherent limitations in how accurate and detailed the information is. Brokers and consumers need to use the new CMS “compare” tool as just one resource when making an important health care decision. 

Please stay tuned as we continue to keep you up to date on these and other developments in our ever -evolving marketplace. Please monitor www.BenefitMall.com and www.HealthcareExchange.com for further developments.