As part of Medicare's safety and value-based purchasing initiatives, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently starting publishing additional information about hospitals' relative safety performance on its HospitalCompare website. The agency's initiative is encountering fierce opposition from hospital groups as well as the Joint Commission, the organization that accredits hospitals. "Hospitals are working very hard to improve safety on a daily basis," Mark Chassin, MD, president of the Joint Commission, told InformationWeek Healthcare. "These [CMS] data don't really contribute much to our knowledge, understanding, or ability to improve, because they're not good quality measures."
