Hospitals object to star ratings by CMS

NPR reported that The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) decided to delay its rollout of a star rating system for hospitals. CMS already offers information about how hospitals perform on a variety of quality metrics. However, the plethora of metrics easily confuses users and the new system is supposed to simplify how consumers can assess hospitals. Hospitals (and others in the provider community) objected to the new system and members of Congress even wrote in to CMS, asking for a delay.

Dr. Jha, who champions greater transparency in health care, was quoted as criticizing CMS for equally weighting the risk of death and the risk of admission. It seems that there are some significant issues with the star rating system. However, it could very well be that the 62 metrics that are used by the new system cannot be neatly summarized into a single rating. If that's the case, CMS and others might need to invest more into user interface design and patient education.