Home Health & Hospice Week

You could soon be under even more public scrutiny than Home Health Compare brings you. CMS has proposed rules to "enable consumers and employers to select higher-quality, lower-cost physicians, hospitals and other health care providers in their area," the agency says in a release. "The new rules will allow organizations that meet certain qualifications access to patient-protected Medicare data to produce public reports on physicians, hospitals and other health care providers. These reports will combine private sector claims data with Medicare claims data to identify which [providers] provide the highest quality, cost-effective care."

"Making more Medicare data available can make it easier for employers and consumers to make smart decisions about their health care," CMS Administrator and physician Donald Berwick says in a release. "Performance reports that include Medicare data will result in higher quality and more cost effective care. And making our health care system more transparent promotes competition anddrives costs down."

The rule is at www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2011-06-08/pdf/2011-14003.pdf. Comments are due Aug. 8.