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Hospitals Get Time to Preview Star Ratings

Hospitals can preview their overall quality star ratings

Hospital star ratings are meant to help patients make a choice on the best hospitals with the highest quality of care. It also encourages hospitals to improve their services.  Patient satisfaction is a significant contributor to the hospital star rating. Although some have criticized the ratings claiming that it oversimplifies hospitals complex data and has a tendency to destroy the reputation of great hospitals.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) base the rating of the hospitals on the assessment of healthcare providers by the consumers and systems survey measures which include parameters such as communication of doctors and nurses with patients, the responsiveness of other staff of the hospitals, preparation of the patient for post-discharge care and hospital hygiene.

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities in the Inpatient Quality Reporting, Outpatient Quality Reporting, and PPS-Exempt Cancer Hospital Quality Reporting programs will have the opportunity to preview this data up until the 5th of May by visiting QualityNet Secure Portal. However, this same information will be on Hospital Compare website ( a consumer-oriented website providing information to consumers on the degree of provision of recommended care to patients by a hospital) by July, thus allowing the public to review this data. This will not include patient safety indicator (PSI) for 2018, due to a software issue, but that of 2017. The PSI result for 2018 will be made available for the October review period and subsequently incorporated into the star rating to be released in October 2017.

Hospitals and other healthcare facilities are therefore encouraged to visit QualityNet Secure Portal and preview their ratings before the 5th of May.