Study finds that improving star ratings attracts more nursing home patients
New results showed nursing homes that got an additional star on the one-to-five scale gained more admissions.
Healthcare report cards and quality ratings are intended to give consumers more information when choosing a care provider such as a hospital or nursing home. Health economist Marcelo Perraillon of the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz recently evaluated whether a simplified rating system used by the website Nursing Home Compare motivated consumers to choose better-rated nursing homes. And as it turns out, it did.
Hospital and nursing home executives now have reason to believe that focusing their efforts on earning additional stars can, in fact, payoff.
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It's been a difficult problem in health economics and policy: whether public reporting of quality information actually works in the absence of experimental data.
The main issue, researchers said, is that no control group exists to help evaluate the effectiveness of the policy, which is intended to help people choose the best providers by improving quality and accessibility of information about nursing homes and other providers. The authors used a statistical method called regression continuity to show that consumers are indeed using the data to inform better decisions about care.
[Also: Trump admin scaling back patient safety fines for nursing homes]
In a regression discontinuity study design, participants are assigned to a comparison group on the basis of a cutoff score on a quality measure. Health economists used this design to estimate changes in new nursing home admissions six months after the publication of the new ratings, which went into effect in 2008.
Their results also showed nursing homes that got an additional star on the one-to-five scale gained more admissions. And they said that not all consumers responded to the change the same way, including Medicaid patients in poorer areas who often give their business to lower-rated nursing homes.
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Researchers said the form of quality reporting matters to consumers, and that the increased use of composite ratings like the five-star system is likely to cause more people to use the system to compare and choose providers that better fit their needs.
Twitter: @JELagasse
Email the writer: jeff.lagasse@himssmedia.com
