Commentary: Four steps would help CMS fix star-rating program’s unintended flaws

Modern Healthcare

This post has been archived and contains information that may be out of date.

Rush University Medical Center in Chicago strives to be a national leader in healthcare quality. We also believe in the vision of the CMS’ hospital star-rating program to provide a transparent, consumer-focused measure of quality and safety. We feel, however, that the current construction of the star ratings contains unintended flaws that compromise this measure from its original vision.

In collaboration with several other academic centers, we have identified several issues with the program that collectively lead to bias against large hospitals, urban hospitals and hospitals that provide complex care.