The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) on Sept. 3 merged eight existing health care compare tools into Care Compare, a single database with information about Medicare providers’ quality, cost, and services rendered.
Previously, Medicare.gov featured separate tools for physicians, hospitals, nursing homes, home health services, hospice care, inpatient rehabilitation facilities, long-term care hospitals, and dialysis facilities. Users may still access the individual tools during a transition period while CMS gathers feedback about Care Compare.
Care Compare is part of the agency’s eMedicare initiative to modernize Medicare data. In addition to streamlining multiple health care compare tools, Care Compare includes new tools, such as a checklist of considerations when selecting a provider.
Along with Care Compare, CMS amended the Procedure Price Look Up (PPL) tool to include physician fees, as well as facility fees. Data from the PPL tool, as well as the Provider Data Catalog, are available through an application programming interface, which enables stakeholders and patients to access, download, and analyze the data.
CMS has released webinar recordings on Care Compare and the updates to the Provider Data Catalog.
Contact Senior Director of Policy Erin O’Malley at eomalley@essentialhospitals.org or 202.585.0127 with questions.
