Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Groups That Rate Hospitals Often Disagree On Rankings
The Wall Street Journal: What Are the Best Hospitals? Rankings Disagree
What makes a top hospital? Four services that publish hospital ratings for consumers strongly disagree, according to a study in the journal Health Affairs. No single hospital received high marks from all four services—U.S. News & World Report, Consumer Reports, the Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades—and only 10% of the 844 hospitals that were rated highly by one service received top marks from another, the study published Monday found. (Beck, 3/2)
The New York Times: Hospital Rating Systems Differ On Best And Worst
Four popular national rating systems used by consumers to judge hospitals frequently come to very different conclusions about which hospitals are the best — or worst — potentially adding to the confusion over health care quality, rather than alleviating it, a new study shows. The analysis, published on Monday in the academic journal Health Affairs, looked at hospital ratings from two publications, U.S. News & World Report and Consumer Reports; Healthgrades, a Denver company; and the Leapfrog Group, an employer-financed nonprofit organization. (Abelson, 3/2)
Politico Pro: Study Finds Little Consensus With Hospital Rating Systems
The quality of hospitals is apparently in the eye of the beholder. A Health Affairs study published Monday examined four popular hospital rating systems and found that their assessments rarely agreed on much — to the likely detriment of the consumers they aim to help. (Norman, 3/2)
Earlier, related KHN coverage: Hospital Ratings Are In The Eye Of The Beholder (Rau, 3/18/13)
