Quote:
Originally Posted by blueash
That summary of CMS hospital medicare rating methodology is not quite the full story. BUT the rating is not based on just 4 outcome and readmissions criteria.
4 does not equal 46 .
" The 2023 Overall Star Rating selects 46 of the hospital quality measures CMS publicly reports on Medicare.gov and divides them into 5 measure groups: Mortality, Safety of Care, Readmission, Patient Experience, and Timely & Effective Care. "
There are 7 mortality numbers including:
1. Death rate for heart attack patients
2 Death rate for coronary artery bypass graft surgery patients
3. Death rate for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients (COPD)
4. Death rate for heart failure patients
5. Death rate for pneumonia patients
6. Death rate for stroke patients
7. Deaths among patients with serious TREATABLE complications after surgery
Then Safety of Care 8 criteria for that category including
8. Central line-associated bloodstream infections
9. Catheter associated urinary tract infections
10 Surgical site infections from colon surgery
11 Surgical site infections from abdominal hysterectomy
12.....
Then Readmission rates for 11 different patient populations
Then 8 different measures of patient experience
Then 13 measures of timely and effective care
So no, golfing eagle, the one star lowest rating possible only given to the worst ~5% of hospitals in the country is not based on 4 criteria.
As to the age of the data, yes it is not 2024 data but it has always taken hospitals time to submit their data to CMS. The summer 2023 ratings include data on patient visits up to 12/21 or up to 6/22 depending on which criteria. There should be a new rating sometime this summer based on data up to 6/2023
As to your excuse that the Villages sees old people. So does every single hospital for the great majority of the diseases being evaluated. Heart attacks means old people, strokes means old people, heart failure means old people. If anything our hospital should be really good at that stuff as it is a lot of what they see.
Waiting times for a room is not age related. Nor is hours in ER waiting or whether the doctor/nurse explained things.
Hospitals with the lowest rating are not bad hospitals. They just are not as good as most other hospitals. It is like cars. Most people who bought a Yugo or a Gremlin did fine with that car. But overall they were not a good a choice as other vehicles. |
Perhaps I should have stated "4 broad categories"--you've split them out but in essence they are all ACS,CHF,CAP,CVA and nosocomial infections. But yes, you are technically correct, no dispute.
I do disagree that these numbers are not skewed by the demographics of the hospital's catchment area. The older the population, the more likely they are to get a nosocomial infection or a post op infection. Older people are more likely to sit at home chugging Alka seltzer for their chest pain and present to the hospital later. Older people are more likely to succumb to CAP despite treatment. Older people may have underlying COPD, young people generally do not. Older people have a higher prevalence of a smoking history. Older people are somewhat less likely to present with a CVA within 1 hour. (Yes, I know the window for thrombolytic Rx has changed). Basically, if they wanted to be accurate, they would have to age match the patient populations of the various hospitals, which they do not do.
The other point is that all those rankings lag 2-3 years, it's just the nature of their methodology.
Again, I think we are saying pretty much the same thing in different ways. TVRH is NOT Mass. General by any means. But based on patient feedback, they seem to be improving since UF took over, so we'll just have to wait 2-3 years to see their new rankings and compare rather than judge today's hospital by old criteria.