Health Information Management

News: CMS adds mortality data for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia to Hospital Compare site

CDI Strategies, August 18, 2011

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CMS recently updated Hospital Compare web site data for 30-day mortality rates and 30-day readmissions rates for inpatients admitted with heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. The data shows national declines in 30-day mortality rates of 15.9% from 2007 through 2010. (Read more at www.hospitalcompare.hhs.gov.) However, 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.

Also this year, national 30-day readmission rates for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia showed small changes in their updated rates. The new 2007 through 2010 rates for these three conditions are 19.8%, 24.8%, and 18.4%, respectively. These rates were slightly higher for heart attack in 2006 through 2009, at 19.9%, and slightly lower heart failure, at 24.5%, and for pneumonia, at 18.2%.
 
“Both sets of inpatient measures are risk-adjusted, taking health conditions into account to ‘level the playing field’ among hospitals and to help ensure accuracy in performance reporting,” CMS Administrator Don Berwick, MD, said in a release.
 
Hospital Compare also provided updated statistics on outpatient surgical infections and whether hospitals care for outpatients who are treated for suspected heart attacks with proven therapies. Furthermore, the site also added 10 measures to capture reporting of patient experience with hospital care.
 
“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 Berwick.



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