The Federal Government's 'Yelp For Hospitals' Lets You Rate Quality Of Care
The Yelp of hospitals has arrived.
The federal government has released a new star system that allows patients to rate the quality of care in all hospitals on a one- to five-star spectrum. It’s known as the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS), and the April 2015 report features 11 measures of patient experience, gathered from data between July 2013 and June 2014.
Things consumers are able to rate hospitals on include doctor and nurse communication, how well pain was mitigated and taken into account, and to what extent they would recommend the hospital to other patients. The hospital reviews — which were done at a total of 3,553 hospitals across the nation — are made through random surveys of patients. They aim to provide Medicare patients with more information about hospital programs.
Out of the 3,553 hospitals, 251 received five stars — about seven percent, according to Kaiser Health News. Most hospitals received four stars (1,205 or 34 percent) or three stars (1,414 or 40 percent). Only about three percent of hospitals got one star, 101 total. It turns out that some of the highest rated hospitals are in Maine, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Minnesota — and the lowest rated ones were in Maryland, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Florida, California, and the District of Columbia.
However, health care workers are concerned that the five-star rating system is too black and white, and won’t offer glimpses into the nuances of hospital care, despite having good intentions.
“While star ratings could be an effective way to make quality information easier to understand, the devil is in the details,” the American Hospital Association said in a statement. “There’s a risk of oversimplifying the complexity of quality care or misinterpreting what is important to a particular patient, especially since patients seek care for many different reasons.”
In other words, just because a hospital was given one or two stars doesn’t mean you’ll necessarily have a bad experience there. In fact, many well-esteemed hospitals like New York-Presbyterian Hospital and Northwestern Memorial Hospital were given three stars. Most hospitals given four or five stars were smaller hospitals that often focused on expensive and specialized surgeries, according to Kaiser Health News. It’s often more common to have an unsavory experience at a larger, general hospital where doctors have less time and there’s more sickness and chaos surrounding you.
"Rating hospitals is more complicated than judging a restaurant or hotel with star ratings," William Dorsey, CEO of Jackson Park Hospital in Chicago, told The Chicago Tribune.