On April 16, 2015 The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) introduced a new rating system to help consumers choose a hospital that will meet their specific needs and expectations of care.
The system includes a star rating system and is located on CMS’s Hospital Compare, the agency’s public information website.
This new system is designed to do the following:
- Deliver better patient care
- Utilize health care dollars more wisely
- Deliver healthier people
The star rating system will measure:
- Nurse and doctor patient communication
- Responsiveness to patient needs
- Hospital cleanliness
- Patients levels of preparedness for discharge
Read more here.
As The Affordable Care Act continues to build steam, it is encouraging to know that consumers will have tools available to them to choose the hospitals and care that is based on transparent patient experiences.
I became aware of the release of this new rating system by reading Aaron Marks Esq. recent blog post on the topic. In it, Mr. Marks goes on to say that the new rating system is based on “information from patient experiences at nearly 3,500 Medicare-certified hospitals”.
Aaron Marks is the owner of The Marks Law Group, LLC based in Atlanta Georgia. Mr. Marks is a catastrophic injury and wrongful death Lawyer who is particularly passionate about non-emergency medical specialty transportation companies (NEMT). These companies specifically cater to the elderly and sick transporting them to non-emergency medical treatment. He and has worked tirelessly to protect these vulnerable consumers from this largely unregulated arm of our health care system. You can read more about this here.
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