Hospital rankings have dominated the news the last week, from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ star ratings to U.S. News & World Report’s annual ranking of the nation’s best hospitals. But consumers shouldn’t take any of the assessments as gospel, argues STAT.
For starters, ratings are subjective by nature, according to the piece; the measures derive from objective data such as medical error rates, but at some point during the process, someone has to take the subjective step of deciding how to weigh the data. For example, Rochester, Minnesota’s Mayo Clinic was the only one of U.S. News’ top five hospitals to earn a five-star score from CMS.
