How to Read Your Hospital's CMS Quality Report
Every hospital that participates in Medicare has a quality report available on the CMS Medicare Care Compare website. Learning how to read and interpret this report gives you powerful information for making healthcare decisions.
Where to Find Your Hospital's Quality Report
Visit Medicare Care Compare and search by hospital name, city, state, or ZIP code. Each hospital's profile page is essentially its quality report.
Sections of a Hospital Quality Report
General Information
- Hospital name, address, phone number, and type (acute care, critical access, etc.)
- Ownership type (government, non-profit, for-profit)
- Whether the hospital has emergency services
- Overall star rating (1-5 stars)
Quality of Care Measures
The report compares the hospital to the national average across key categories:
- Mortality: Death rates within 30 days of admission for conditions like heart attack, heart failure, pneumonia, stroke, and COPD
- Safety of Care: Rates of healthcare-associated infections and other safety indicators
- Readmission: How often patients return to the hospital within 30 days
- Patient Experience: HCAHPS survey results on communication, responsiveness, and overall satisfaction
- Timely and Effective Care: How quickly patients receive recommended treatments
Understanding the Comparisons
For most measures, CMS compares the hospital to the national average using three categories:
- "Better than the national average": Statistically significantly better performance
- "No different than the national average": Performance within the expected range
- "Worse than the national average": Statistically significantly worse performance
- "Number of cases too small": Not enough data for meaningful comparison
Payment and Value of Care
This section shows the average Medicare payment for specific conditions and procedures, helping you understand costs relative to quality.
Tips for Reading the Report
- Focus on measures relevant to your specific health needs
- Look at multiple measures, not just the overall star rating
- Pay attention to footnotes — they provide important context
- "Number of cases too small" doesn't mean the hospital is bad; it may just be small or not see many cases of that condition
- Compare multiple hospitals side by side using the comparison feature
- Check when the data was last updated to understand how current the information is
Data sourced from CMS. Visit Medicare Care Compare or call 1-800-MEDICARE for assistance.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice.
Important
This article explains how hospital quality data works and is for general information only. It is not medical advice and must not be used to decide whether to seek, delay or refuse care — that is a decision for you and a clinician who knows your situation.
CMS quality measures describe care delivered during earlier reporting periods and are refreshed roughly quarterly. A hospital's staffing, services and performance can change well before the published numbers do.
hospiguide.org is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to CMS, Medicare, or any U.S. government agency, and publishes no ratings of its own.
Before acting on anything here, verify current details at Medicare.gov Care Compare or call 1-800-MEDICARE (1-800-633-4227), TTY 1-877-486-2048.
HospiGuide.org Editorial Team
Our editorial team explains U.S. hospital quality data using official CMS datasets and government publications. We are not medical professionals, we do not recommend hospitals, and we accept no payment for coverage. Every factual claim is checked against a CMS or federal source. Read our editorial policy.
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