Reference no: EM133554816

Question: The website, Hospital Compare, is driven by Medicare claims data instead of medical chart abstractions. Critics say that this data was never designed to capture clinical nuances. They argue that the data is deficient because of a lack of sufficient coding specificity, the inability to distinguish between complications and comorbidities, and the limitation of the data to that from Medicare/Medicaid recipients. On the other hand, supporters highlight the transparency of the data on Hospital Compare, reduced labor costs (compared to case abstraction), and the enhanced reliability of reporting when it is directly tied to payment. Do you side with the critics or supporters? Does CMS data provide a useful source of information to evaluate hospital performance or do its limitations outweigh any potential advantage?