Healthcare Financing: Centers for Medicare and Medical Services Data

Financing Health Care
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Financing Health Care
The Centers for Medicare and Medical Services website (CMS.gov), provides data on how hospitals compare in terms of 30-day mortality and readmission rates on the basis of national and state benchmarks (Medicare.gov, n.d). The 30-day mortality (death) measures refer to estimates of all deaths arising from any cause within the first 30 days following hospital admission. The mortality measures are often given as estimates of the number of deaths in 30 days following entrance to the hospital for a certain medical condition or after a surgical operation to correct a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) (Medicare.gov, n.d). These deaths can arise for any reason and may occur in the hospitals or following discharge. Information from the website is used by health care professionals, consumers and policy, insurance agencies and policy makers to make critical decisions regarding the quality of care in health care organizations.
Consumers and health care professionals use data from CMS.gov to make critical decisions about their next hospitalizations (CMS.gov, 2016). The information obtained from the website can help consumers make highly informed decisions on which hospitals offer the recommended health care to patients. Consumers can also select from a list of hospitals and compare their performance measure for any information related to cardiac failure, heart attack, surgery, pneumonia or other conditions (CMS.gov, 2016). Hospitals that have high hospital readmission rates are likely to be affected in terms of consumer choices. This will ultimately affect the number of patients who are admitted to such hospitals and consequently lower the organizations’ profits. Since hospitals are constantly making efforts to remain the best choices for consumers, their ratings by the CMS website matters.