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Vizient, Inc. Statement on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Release of Overall Hospital Star Ratings
[July 28, 2016]

Vizient, Inc. Statement on Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Release of Overall Hospital Star Ratings


Vizient, Inc. concurs with statements made by hospitals and industry associations regarding the release of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Overall Hospital Star Ratings. While our company strongly supports providing meaningful information to help the public make informed healthcare decisions, CMS's current methodology creates rating results that have the potential to steer patients away from some of the nation's best hospitals.

More specifically, after an analysis of the April and July Star Rating preview reports provided by member hospitals and health systems, Vizient identified the following issues as a result of CMS's methodology:

  • Academic medical centers (AMCs) were potentially disproportionately represented as 'Poorly Performing Hospitals' (1 and 2 star out of 5)
  • Unique AMC patient population characteristics were not considered. Characteristics such as Acute Patient Transfers & Low Socio-Economic Status (SES (News - Alert)) were not adequately accounted for or risk adjusted in key measures such as readmissions and mortality
  • Improvement efforts hospitals made in July 2016 in key measure groups (~64%) would not be reflected to the public for 2 more years. Thus, many of the measures to be reported by CMS did not reflect current progress

Teaching hospitals including AMCs and safety net hospitals (groups that take care of the most acute patients), fair disproportionally poorly as there is not proper risk adjustment for transfer status, acuity including co-morbidities, and socioeconomic status. Additionally, neither Vizient nor its member hospitals could replicate the methodology used since complete information is not available from CMS.

Vizient strogly believes in the idea of providing easily understood and meaningful information to the public to help guide their health care decisions. We also believe the data and insights driving the rankings should be able to be used by hospitals to improve the care they deliver. This means the methodology must be transparent, complete and actionable.



About Vizient, Inc.

Vizient, Inc., the largest member-driven health care performance improvement company in the country, provides innovative data-driven solutions, expertise and collaborative opportunities that lead to improved patient outcomes and lower costs. Vizient serves a diverse membership and customer base which includes academic medical centers, pediatric facilities, community hospitals, integrated health delivery networks and non-acute health care providers and represents almost $100 billion in annual purchasing volume. The Vizient brand identity represents the integration of VHA Inc., University HealthSystem Consortium and Novation, which combined in 2015, as well as the recently acquired MedAssets' Spend and Clinical Resource Management (SCM) segment, which includes Sg2. In 2016, Vizient received a World's Most Ethical Company designation from the Ethisphere Institute. Vizient headquarters is based in Irving, Texas, with locations in Chicago and other cities across the United States. Please visit www.vizientinc.com as well as our newsroom, blog, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube pages for more information about the company.



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