CMS asks for feedback with release of Hospital Compare data—and the industry is already not pleased

The federal hospital ratings website Hospital Compare may be getting another revamp. After several delays, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Thursday that it has released updated hospital performance data on the consumer comparison website that uses star ratings for hospitals, as well as on data.medicare.gov. The data, collected through CMS’ Hospital Quality Initiative programs, includes specific quality measures, as well as the Overall Hospital Star Ratings. They were last updated in Dec. 2017. But CMS also announced it's looking for feedback on ways to improve how it conducts the rankings to make the data more "precise and consistent" and make more direct "like-to-like" comparisons. “These decision-making tools offer greater transparency on hospital performance for a wide variety of users—patients, caregivers, families, and the broader healthcare industry," said CMS Administrator Seema Verma in a statement. "We constantly aim to improve these resources with feedback from stakeholders, and we are confident this latest update of Hospital Compare data further strengthens this data."