Does the Hospital Compare 5-Star Rating Promote Public Health?

Health Affairs Blog—September 8, 2016

Catherine H. MacLean, MD, PhD, chief value medical officer at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), and Louis A. Shapiro, president & CEO at HSS, explain the reason for measuring and publicly reporting quality of care. This comes after Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) released "5-star" scores for hospitals on its Hospital Compare website. 

According to the article, "The reason we measure and publicly report quality is to facilitate improvements in the health of the population by a) informing consumers about high- or low-quality providers that they might want to choose or avoid, and b) providing information to providers that they can act upon to improve the care they deliver and the scores the public will see. We expect these actions to improve public health by directing consumers to higher quality providers and by inspiring all providers to deliver higher quality care."

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