Public Reporting of 30-Day Mortality for Patients Hospitalized With Acute Myocardial Infarction and Heart Failure

For cardiac care, the Centers for Medicare M how often smokers are counseled to quit; how rapidly hospitals provide reperfusion therapy for patients with an ST-segment elevation myocardial infarction; and how often the ejection fraction is measured for patients with heart failure. All of these measures assess care that is strongly recommended by guidelines. The measures include only those patients who should receive this care and are reported at the hospital level simply as percentages. The performance on these measures should ideally be 100%, and the rates have improved markedly over time. ; View this table:Table. Acute Myocardial Infarction and Heart Failure Process-of-Care Measures On June 21, 2007, CMS expanded the measures to include outcomes and posted information on its “Hospital Compare” website1 regarding hospital-specific 30-day mortality rates for patients with acute myocardial infarction and heart failure. These measures used administrative claims data and were validated against measures using medical record data; the measures were approved by the National Quality Forum.2,3 In 2007, the publicly reported information was limited to describing hospitals as having rates that were higher, lower, or no different than the national average. Hospitals received information about their rates, their patients, and comparisons with other hospitals in their state and with the nation.This year, CMS is expanding the publicly available information. For acute myocardial infarction, heart failure, and now pneumonia, CMS will post the calculated risk-standardized 30-day mortality rates (RSMRs) and the 95% interval estimates for each hospital that treated Medicare patients with these conditions; hospital volume for each condition also will be posted. As …