On Wednesday, government health officials announced the delay of the star-rating system that was previously announced for hospitals across the United States. The decision was also backed by senators who thought the system may confuse users.
CMS star rating system
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) had planned to implement a star-rating system for hospitals across the U.S., so users could have a better view of the workplace and be able to compare services.
CMS has already implemented this system on nursing homes, to help consumers and families compare nursing homes in a more easy way, to identify the one that fits better for them.
The system has a website called The Nursing Home Compare Web in where users can observe different quality rating systems from 1 to 5 stars, just like hotel rating. Ratings take into consideration health inspections, staffing and quality measures.
This week CMS was scheduled to publish the overall rating system for the hospitals in the nation, to give users a more selected profile of hospitals and their services. Yet, on Wednesday, the agency announced a delay on the publishing.
CMS is concerned that the calculations made may be misleading to consumers so they decided to delay the project to July. The agency will continue to work with stakeholders to provide a more veridic information.
According to the agency the new timeline delay was also, “In response to hospital and other stakeholder feedback.”
The ratings of the hospitals will be based on the patient’s experience at Medicare-certified hospitals, includind its cleanliness, and administration. They will be showed in a Hospital Compare website similar to the nursing homes.
Even though consumers will have to wait for the rating system hospitals across the nation, they are happy with the decision made by the agency, since a lot of worry for the system has been stated.
“While we agree that the public reporting of provider quality data is important, we are concerned that CMS’S new overall hospital star rating oversimplifies the complexity of delivering high-quality care. Rating hospital care is far more complex than a simple star rating,” President and CEO of the Georgia Hospital Association, Earl Rogers said in a statement.
The American Hospital Association has stated that the ratings were not considering other factors while evaluating the hospitals. The industry group assured that CMS should also consider treatment outcomes, number of patients a hospital was seeing in the moment of the rating evaluation and low incomes.
Congress members have also assured the doubts they had in the system considering misleading to consumers.
Source: WSJ