Inpatient Measures

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and the nation’s hospitals work collaboratively to publicly report hospital quality performance information on Care Compare website located at www.medicare.gov/care-compare/ and the Provider Data Catalog on data.cms.gov.

Care Compare displays hospital performance data in a consistent, unified manner to ensure the availability of credible information about the care delivered in the nation’s hospitals. Most of the participants are short-term acute care hospitals that will receive a reduction to the annual update of their Medicare fee-for-service payment rate if they do not participate by submitting data or meet other requirements of the Hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting (IQR) Program. The Hospital IQR Program was established by Section 501(b) of the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA (PDF)) of 2003 and extended and expanded by Section 5001(a) of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005.

Care Compare currently provides quality measure information on:

• Process of care measures are measures that show whether or not a health care provider gives recommended care based on guidelines, standards of care or practice parameters; that is, the treatment known to give the best results for most patients with a particular condition. These measures convert patient medical record information into percentages and/or rates of performance. Providing this information allows consumers to compare the performance of a health care provider to other providers in their state and the nation.
• Outcome measures are measures designed to reflect the results of care, rather than whether or not a specific treatment or intervention was performed.
• Patient experience of care is measures by a national, standardized survey of hospital patients about their experiences during a recent inpatient hospital stay. This is also referred to as HCAHPS (Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems).