CMS Hospital Compare hits front page news
Hospital data are there, but are they used?
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just added new information to its Hospital Compare site — death rates and readmission rates relating to heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. Alongside front page coverage, USA Today online recently captured the data and offered readers an interactive map and chart to view findings by hospitals. Are publicly reported data going to find a more mainstream audience — i.e., health care consumers?
Robert M. Wachter, MD, is professor and associate chairman of the department of medicine at the University of California, San Francisco; chief of the division of hospital medicine and chief of the medical service at UCSF Medical Center; and prolific health care blogger. A cheerleader of transparency and public reporting, he says since the beginning of such initiatives in 2003, they have "made a tremendous difference in creating focus on certain areas in safety," with results that he's seen at his own hospital and nationwide.
However, he says, "I don't think any real people look at these numbers. If you'd said to me seven or eight years ago, we want to improve quality, we think we have some decent measures of quality, and we're going to use public reporting and transparency as our mechanism to try to move the needle, I would have said that will work only in proportion to the degree that patients or their advocates are looking at the data and making choices based on it. So what's fascinating is that the public reporting and transparency is working to generate change and resource flow and focus, but the mechanism is not that patients are looking."
He says there are "transparency purists" who have said over the years that patients using these data for decision-making is just around the corner. But Wachter says we're not there yet. Patients aren't looking at these data to choose hospitals or doctors as they would, for example, look at an issue Consumer Reports to choose a car with the best crash rating.
"I think over time it's inevitable that [consumers will use online data sources for determining doctors and hospitals] although it's clear that it's going to be slower than we thought it was," he says.
He says many "big players" are showing interest in publishing hospital data, such as Google and Microsoft, and the best-selling edition of US News and World Report is the one listing America's best hospitals. "So there's a lot of interest in this, and I think if you just the connect the dots" and offer better tools, less clunky and more user-friendly web sites, as well as better searchability, it will move more into the consumer arena. If you "find something that is very thoughtfully packaged, I think you're going to really see it begin to move market share; it's going to take a few more years, but I think it's going to happen."
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) just added new information to its Hospital Compare site death rates and readmission rates relating to heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia.You have reached your article limit for the month. Subscribe now to access this article plus other member-only content.
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