In another move that strengthens CMS positioning itself as a champion of better quality care, CMS has added outpatient indicators to hospital performance measurements listed on its Hospital Compare website.
For the first time, it's possible to compare hospital quality of care on several outpatient measures that shed light on the quality of care available in outpatient and emergency departments.
The updated data, which was released by CMS on its HealthCare.gov's Hospital Compare site, will allow consumers to compare hospitals based on not only inpatient, but also outpatient quality-of-care markers. Medicare patients will be able to see how efficiently facilities use certain types of imaging equipment, protecting them from exposure to potentially harmful radiation that may not be necessary.
Data include the rates of outpatient MRIs for low back pain, outpatient re-tests after a screening mammogram, and two ratios that explain how often outpatient departments gave patients "double" computed tomography (CT) scans when a single one would have sufficed. Hospital Compare also offers new measures that show whether outpatients who are treated for suspected heart attacks receive proven therapies that reduce mortality, such as an aspirin upon arrival. Another measure looks at how well outpatient surgical patients are shielded from infection.
CMS has also updated data for outcomes related to inpatient hospital care. Yesterday's update includes new 30-day mortality rates and 30-day readmission rates for inpatients admitted with heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia.
Based on the data, the national 30-day mortality rates for heart attack have continued to decline, falling by 0.4 percent from the 2005-08 rate of 16.6 to 16.2 percent.
Some of the Hospital Compare measures likely will be used in a value-based purchasing program that will kick in on Jan. 1, 2013, per the Affordable Care Act, Barry Straube, CMS chief medical officer and director of the agency's Office of Clinical Standards & Quality, said during a press briefing Wednesday. A methodology will link scores from the measures to financial payments.
Straube admitted that Hospital Compare is still "a work in progress." There's still more to learn when it comes to reporting in the outpatient realm, he said. While they have some frequency measures, they still need to learn what the right number of follow-up images would be. "That is still an evolving science," he said.
To learn more:
- read Kaiser Health News' compilation of coverage
- read the Palm Beach Post's report
- read the Santa Cruz Sentinel's article
- here's CMS's new website
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