CMS announces jump in number of hospitals reporting quality care data

May 20 2004

Hospital participation in the National Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative is booming as the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMA) posts its second web site refresh of hospital quality of care data, CMS Administrator Mark B. McClellan, M.D., Ph.D., announced today. 

“We commend those early hospitals who showed the way by voluntarily reporting the quality data that we hope all hospitals will provide in the future,” McClellan said.  “This initiative will continue to improve in the coming years, with additional measures to be published on our consumer web site, www.medicare.gov.” 

Data from the National Voluntary Hospital Reporting Initiative (NVHRI) is posted on the CMS website, www.cms.gov. 

There are now 3,449 hospitals registered to publicly report quality data under the initiative, compared to 2,727 when the web postings were last updated in February. 

Among the hospitals currently reporting quality information, 1,952 hospitals will publicly report data on at least one of the 10 quality measures included in the initiative, up from 1,407 in February.  Additionally, 647 hospitals will report at least one measure on all three clinical conditions covered by the initiative, compared to 492 in February, and 227 will report on all 10 measures. 

This high level of participation indicates that approximately 25 percent of the almost 4,000 hospitals now paid under Medicare’s prospective payment system (PPS) already have demonstrated that they can meet the reporting provisions of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA).  There are now 1,034 eligible hospitals voluntarily submitting data that meets the MMA standard. 

MMA does not require PPS hospitals to report quality data, but those inpatient acute care hospitals that do not report will receive a 0.4 percentage point reduction in the market basket update on which Medicare payments are based for fiscal year 2005.  In order to get the full update, they must begin reporting by July 1, 2004. 

The NVHRI was launched in December 2002, and the first data was published in October 2003.  It is a public-private collaboration that provides hospital performance information to the public.  The American Hospital Association, the Federation of American Hospitals, and the Association of American Medical Colleges, and the Federation of American Hospitals are working closely with CMS the initiative’s other partners, including HHS’ Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, to implement this national public reporting initiative. 

“There is a lot of work yet to be done, but we are making great progress toward having all hospitals report voluntarily on the quality of their care,” McClellan said.  “Patients will be able to use this information to pick the right hospital for their needs, ultimately improving health care for everyone.” 

The latest quality information is available at www.cms.hhs.gov/quality/hospital.