CMS to combine, standardize provider quality compare tools

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services plans to combine and standardize its quality compare tools for hospitals, long-term care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, nursing homes, physicians, home health, hospice and dialysis providers so users can access the same information through a single point of entry and simplified navigation, CMS Administrator Seema Verma announced yesterday. The agency plans to transition to the new Medicare Care Compare portal this spring, along with an improved companion portal with more detailed data for researchers and stakeholders. She said the changes won’t change public reporting requirements. 

“In the coming weeks, we’ll be working with various stakeholders, including beneficiaries, patients and their advocates, health care groups, health care providers, researchers and the larger clinical community, to preview new features and gather feedback before the tools are completed and publicly launched,” Verma blogged. “We’ll continue to make improvements leading up to and following the launch as part of our iterative improvement process and are committed to ensuring beneficiaries and other users have access to the accurate and useful comparison information they rely on.”

Nancy Foster, AHA vice president of quality and patient safety policy, said AHA “is a longstanding supporter of transparency around quality information and we look forward to learning more about this proposed redesign. In fact, a voluntary effort by hospitals to share important quality information was the foundation of Hospital Compare’s launch in 2005. The health care field has changed significantly since then and this redesign effort may provide an opportunity to modernize how quality data are shared with the public.”