The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has announced the inclusion of Veterans Administration (VA) hospital performance data as part of the federal agency’s Hospital Compare website.
The website, along with the agency’s Physician Compare website, are, according to CMS, a part of an Administration-wide effort to increase the availability and accessibility of information on quality to help consumers make informed healthcare decisions and encourage care improvements among healthcare professionals and hospitals. Hospital Compare allows consumers to select multiple hospitals and directly compare performance measure information related to heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, surgery and other conditions.
CMS continues to evolve the website, with the addition of the Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating in July 2016 and the re-introduction of measure data from Veterans Health Administration Hospitals. The VA tables include data for quarterly timely and effective care measures, VA satisfaction survey results, outcomes measures including mortality and readmission rates for selected conditions, behavioral health measures, and measures of patient safety.
The goal of this project is to present the VA’s quality and safety data to veterans, their families and the public in a useful and understandable format. Additional VA hospital data will be added in December with plans for future seamless integration of VA data onto the Hospital Compare website to allow comparison of performance between VA and civilian acute care hospitals, , CMS said.
“We are excited to be working with VA to expand on this work so that Americans will have the information they need on more facilities in order to make an informed decision on their healthcare,” said Patrick Conway, M.D., CMS acting principal deputy administrator and chief medical officer. “We are strongly committed to transparency and providing Americans seeking health care information they need to help make decisions on the care they seek.”
VA hospital performance data can be seen here.
