On July 9, important new information was added to CMS’s Hospital Compare web site. The new information includes data concerning how often patients return to a hospital within thirty days after being discharged for heart attack, heart failure, and pneumonia. Previously, the site only included mortality rates for these three conditions. CMS believes 30-day readmission rates are a good indicator of how well the hospital treated the patient the first time around. Hospital readmission rates are also believed to be a key indicator of reduced quality of health care and a key factor in increasing hospital costs. Thus reducing readmission rates is an important component of President Obama’s health care reform agenda. CMS believes that including this data on the Hospital Compare web site, along with including information that the hospital’s mortality and readmission rate is “better than,” “no different from,” or “worse than” other hospitals, will prompt hospitals to work toward achieving the level of the top-performing hospitals in the country.
You can read CMS’s entire press release concerning the new ratings here.