Sigh.

Sigh. Yes, it's helpful to have snapshot info, but not if it isn't usefully informative. Besides, it's not like patients have a choice too often anymore about what hospital they are sent to. It's insurance (or lack), proximity (esp for emergencies), or specific care needs (like a NICU) that determine this. So if it's supposed to help consumers/patients, I'm not sure how?

Plus, I have some non-PC regional and cultural observations about where the patient surveys that are part of this gave lots of high ratings versus lots of low ratings. If you guess, you will probably be at least half right.

And measures like how many people die at this hospital are much too crude to be anything other than a scare to people. Unless they are so grossly obviously messed up that you shouldn't need a star rating to tell you something is extremely wrong. That's a tool for regulators and insurance companies to leverage. Which again leads to questions about how concerned they are about informing the consumers/patients with this star rating versus money spent on healthcare as an end in itself.

http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/20/474981709/medicare-delays-plans-for-new-star-ratings-of-hospitals
http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2016/04/20/474981709/medicare-delays-plans-for-new-star-ratings-of-hospitals