Bowing to industry and Congressional pressure, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services announced Wednesday it has postponed the scheduled April 21 release of its controversial five-star hospital ratings until July.
Other quality measures scheduled for update and addition on its website, Hospital Compare, will be delayed until May 4.
In a statement sent to hospitals, the agency said that during the development of the methodology, "CMS received a significant amount of support, but also targeted concerns about specific calculations."
American Hospital Association president and CEO Rick Pollack hailed the delay as "a necessary step as hospitals and health systems work with CMS to improve the ratings for patients, and the AHA commends CMS for their decision. Health care consumers need reliable, factual information to make critical care decisions.
"We will continue to share our concerns with CMS as we look for ways to make changes to the ratings system, and ensure it is useful and helpful for patients."
The idea that the federal government, on which many hospitals rely on for major portions of their reimbursement revenue, will give some hospitals mediocre one- and two-star ratings could have a devastating impact on their operations. It could jeopardize their inclusion in health plan networks. Conversely, higher star rated hospitals could gain greater negotiating power for their contracts. In either case, the star ratings are likely to pack a major financial wallop.
In an April 11 letter to CMS acting administrator Andy Slavitt, 60 U.S. senators and more than 200 members of the House urged that the star ratings be delayed and undergo a methodology review.
The senators said the release of the ratings, which are known to hospitals through a pre-review, "may not accurately take into account hospitals that treat patients with low socioeconomic status or multiple complex chronic conditions."
They said the star ratings "may be misleading to consumers due to flaws in the measures that underpin the ratings." Also, the senators wrote, hospitals that perform complex procedures for complex patients may get low star ratings," unfairly indicating they have poorer quality than other hospitals.
CMS also has provided "insufficient details regarding the methodology used to determine these ratings."
The letter from members of Congress said that "the hospital star ratings, in their current form, may be unfairly masking quality or, possibly, over-weighting of patient experience measures and will therefore not help consumers make well-informed decisions about which hospital to use."
They mentioned that the quality measures used in the star ratings algorithm unfairly impact teaching hospitals.
The letter from Capital Hill followed a March 18 letter from the American Hospital Association, America's Essential Hospitals, and the Federation of American Hospitals that urged delay and stating "serious concerns that these star ratings will be misleading to consumers."