Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Hospitals Have A Long-Standing Gripe That Ranking Sites Don't Give Full Picture Of Quality. Would Patients' Input Help?
Modern Healthcare: Could Patient Input Improve Hospital Ratings' Accuracy?
A long-standing argument against hospital rating sites like Hospital Compare and U.S. News & World Report is that healthcare is too complex to assign a single rating that accurately represents the overall quality of care at a hospital. One way to get at that issue could be allowing consumers to modify the information used by the sites to determine ratings, according to researchers at RAND Corp. in a New England Journal of Medicine perspective piece published Wednesday. But healthcare consumer experts have questioned whether that change would solve the fundamental issues with ratings sites, such as flawed quality measures and consumer health literacy. (Castellucci, 8/29)
In other news —
Modern Healthcare: Not-For-Profit Hospitals' Cost-Cutting Isn't Keeping Up With Revenue Decline
Not-for-profit hospitals have begun to rein in expenses, but it's not happening as fast as revenue growth is dropping, setting the sector on a tenuous precipice, according to a new report. The median annual expense growth rate fell from 7.1% in 2016 to 5.7% in 2017 but annual revenue growth declined faster, from 6.1% to 4.6%, despite increased merger and acquisition activity, according to Moody's Investors Service. (Kacik, 8/29)
