• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

CMS Web site adds specifics on death rates

Quality Improvement Monitor, August 22, 2008

CMS this week updated its Hospital Compare Web site to include more specific information on cardiac mortality measures. It also added data on the 30-day death rates for pneumonia patients.

The Web site, which aims to get consumers to compare hospitals based on quality of care, had previously just listed whether an organization’s 30-day mortality rates were better than the nationwide rate, the same as the nationwide rate, or below the nationwide rate. Now, users can drill down to see the percentage of heart attack patients who died within 30 days after leaving the facility.

In Boston, for example, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston Medical Center, and Tufts Medical Center are all listed as statistically no different than the national rate. However, charts on the site now also show that Massachusetts General Hospital performed the best – 13.8% of its patients died within 30 days of leaving the hospital – and Boston Medical Center performed the worst – 17.2% of its patients died within 30 days. CMS risk-adjusted the data, which could be a potential public relations boon, or problem, depending on how well a hospital scores.

CMS, which also added pediatric asthma measures to its Web site, says the update will make it easier for patients to navigate and understand what the quality measures mean. But a new report in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association, found the Medicare Web site confounded the vast majority of senior citizens.

For more information, click here.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive