Hospital leaders had criticized previous ratings because they believed the methodology used to create them was flawed and produced inconsistent results that made the ratings misleading and not useful to consumers.
CMS explains the new 2021 methodology for its Hospital Quality Star Ratings uses “a simple average of measure scores to calculate measure group scores and Z-score standardization to standardize measure group scores” in five measure groups.
Hospitals enjoy substantial protection when reporting physicians to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB) in many situations, with laws protecting against retaliatory lawsuits as long as the hospital was required to report and followed appropriate protocols. However, there are situations in which reporting to the NPDB is not required but might still be the right thing to do when leaders are concerned about a clinician’s threat to patient safety. In those circumstances, the protection against liability is not ironclad.
Hospitals might face quandaries over when they must report clinicians to the National Practitioner Data Bank (NPDB), but it is important to remember queries to the NPDB also are required. Failure to follow protocol could put the facility in peril.
Healthcare quality researchers have demonstrated a single electronic health record may not be a complete source of relevant clinical information. The authors of a recent study suggested adding standards-based data from a health information exchange can improve quality of care.
With the new question on healthcare equity, Leapfrog is encouraging hospitals to analyze their quality and safety data by race, ethnicity, or language.
