Star Rating

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) created incentives for health care providers to work together to treat patients across care settings, but in order for these facilities to receive any savings, they must demonstrate that quality performance standards are met. In an effort to align clinical quality measures with the goals of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) clinical quality measure are assessed against domains, heart failure and pneumonia fall under Clinical Process/ Effectiveness (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2014). Heart failure is an increasingly common condition particularly among older Americans and can result in substantial morbidity, mortality, and consumption of medical resources (Krumholz
For instance, Tennessee scored 84% compared to the National score of 82% in the category of ‘ Patients Who Reported That Their Doctors “Always” communicated well’ in the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Health Providers in Systems (HCAHPS) Measures. This data provides useful information to develop better quality improvement programs.

Baptist and Methodist hospitals compared to each other The outcome and process measures of Baptist and Methodist hospitals are no different, however the HCAHPS measures for Methodist are better than Baptist, especially the ‘Patient Survey Summary Star Rating’. In comparing the two based on the HCAHPS measures, as a patient, provider, or administrator, the scores are better than that of Baptist and therefore would give good reason to select care or employment at Methodist over Baptist, however these measures should drive the administrator to develop a better quality improvement program to increase the measure percentages.

Baptist and Methodist hospitals compared to the state and national
The HCAHPS measure of ‘Patients At Each Hospital Who Reported That YES, They Were Given Information About What To Do During Their Recovery At Home’ appears to be the only high scoring category for state and national and Methodist is no different with Baptist coming in as worse. However, the benchmarks set by state and national are not that good, so it doesn’t leave much for these two hospitals to aspire to. With that said, patients, providers, and administrator, should work together to develop a better quality improvement program for their state.

The future of the heart failure and pneumonia performance indicators This data suggest that improvements are definitely needed as it pertains to heart failure and pneumonia process and outcome measures, not only in the two hospitals but state and nation wide higher benchmarks should be set.

Recommendations to improve the patient experience The poorest HCAHPS category suggests that Baptist hospital needs to improve assisting their patients with understanding their care upon leaving the hospital. Baptist is setting themselves up for increased readmission