The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is providing confidential hospital-specific reports to allow hospitals to review their performance using two disparity methods. CMS is offering the reports in an effort to illuminate differences in outcome rates among patient groups within a hospital and enable comparison of differences across hospitals.
The reports are available for download through Sept. 24. They assess performance on the Hospital 30-day, All-Cause, Risk-Standardized Readmission Rate Following Pneumonia Hospitalization measure (NQF 0506).
With data from the fiscal year 2019 measurement period (July 1, 2014, to June 30, 2017), CMS uses Medicare and Medicaid dual eligibility as the social risk factor for stratification of readmission rates through two methods:
- comparing readmission rates among dual-eligible and non–dual eligible patients within a hospital; and
- calculating readmission rates for dual-eligible and non–dual eligible patients separately, allowing comparison of dual-eligible patient performance across hospitals.
Hospitals can register for a National Provider Call on Sept. 12 from 4–5 pm ET to review the disparity methods and answer questions. Educational documents, a mock report with sample data, and a user guide to aid hospitals in interpreting the reports are available on Quality Net.
If a hospitals has problems accessing its report, contact cmsdisparitymethods@yale.edu.
For questions, contact Senior Director of Policy Erin O’Malley at eomalley@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127.
