IRVING, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--In response to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) request for public input on the methodology of the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating on the Hospital Compare website, Vizient has submitted a detailed proposal for a more clinically grounded approach for the ratings.
Vizient’s recommendations are intended to improve the Star Rating’s accuracy and clarity for patients, as well as to create important feedback for providers for performance improvement. Among other recommendations, Vizient proposes removing latent variable modeling and instead using a more explicit, clear and easy to understand measure weighting approach. Vizient also recommends leveraging a well-represented clinical expert panel to identify relevant measures and define clinically meaningful groupings. Vizient strongly encourages CMS to explore leveraging more current data and creating hospital peer groupings to provide more actionable and meaningful Star Ratings that would enable providers to better focus their performance improvement initiatives.
Despite the various adjustments and alternative ideas to improve the current Star Ratings program, issues remain, providing inconsistent results and penalizing hospitals that provide better care. “We are encouraged that CMS has taken steps to seek additional input in order to deliver a better Star Ratings program. We have and will continue to advocate for changes to the methodology that will support the core mission of the Star Ratings of providing patients and the public with a clear, simple and objective mechanism for identifying the best hospital for the care they need,” said Beth Godsey, vice president, advanced analytics and informatics for Vizient.
Vizient is the nation’s largest health care performance improvement company serving a diverse membership that includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health care delivery networks and non-acute health care providers.
About Vizient, Inc.
Vizient, Inc., the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, provides innovative data-driven solutions, expertise and collaborative opportunities that lead to improved patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient’s diverse membership base includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health delivery networks and non-acute health care providers and represents approximately $100 billion in annual purchasing volume. The Vizient brand identity represents the integration of VHA Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium and Novation, which combined in 2015, as well as MedAssets’ Spend and Clinical Resource Management (SCM) segment, including Sg2, which was acquired in 2016. In 2019, Vizient again received a World’s Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute. Vizient’s headquarters are in Irving, Texas, with locations in Chicago and other cities across the United States. Please visit www.vizientinc.com as well as our newsroom, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube pages for more information about the company.
