Quality of Care
The Five-Star Overall Hospital Quality Rating is a summary of multiple measures of quality into a single star rating for each hospital, based on data submitted to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS). Reported on a five-star scale, this measure shows how well a hospital performs across different areas of quality, such as treating heart attacks and pneumonia, readmission rates, safety of care, and patient experience. The reporting period is January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023.
The Patient Experience Survey Ratings are based on the HCAHPS Patient Survey, a Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) national survey that is administered to a random sample of adult patients within 48 hours to 6 weeks after discharge from a hospital. Reported on a five-bar scale, with each bar representative of a star in the Five-Star Overall Hospital Quality Rating, the patient survey ratings measure patients’ experience of their hospital care, including how well nurses and doctors communicated, how responsive hospital staff were to their needs, and the cleanliness and quietness of the hospital environment. The reporting period is January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023.
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All other measures of quality on CompareMaine are displayed using a three-bar scale, comparing a hospital’s rating to other reporting hospitals in the state, except when no state average is available. Three bars represent better than average performance and one bar represents worse than average performance. More bars are better.
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Preventing Serious Complications measures how well hospitals prevent complications while in the hospital or after having certain procedures or surgeries. The score uses ten Patient Safety Indicators from the AHRQ collected July 1, 2021 – June 30, 2023. A hospital’s rating is the rate per 1,000 eligible hospital discharges. A rating below 1.00 means there were fewer infections than predicted. A lower number is better.
Preventing Healthcare-Associated Infections measures how often patients in the hospital can get certain serious infections that could have likely been prevented. Data for these measures come from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and covers the January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023 reporting period. A hospital’s standard infection ratio (SIR) is the number of infections in a hospital over the predicted number of infections. A number below 1.00 means there were fewer infections than predicted. A lower number is better.
Preventing Falls with Injury measures how well hospitals prevent patients from falling and getting injured. The number of any kind of unplanned patient falls (regardless of the cause) that result in any type or degree of injury, per 1,000 patient days. "Patient days" is the annual sum of the daily count of inpatient stays, plus total outpatient hours divided by 24. This measure uses data that Maine hospitals submitted to the Maine Health Data Organization for the reporting period January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023. A lower number is better.
Preventing Pressure Ulcers measures how well hospitals prevent pressure sores or bed sores that can lead to serious infection. This measure uses data that Maine hospitals submitted to the Maine Health Data Organization for the reporting period January 1, 2023 – December 31, 2023. A lower number is better.
Unplanned Hospital-Wide Readmissions measures how well hospitals prevent patients from being re-admitted within 30 days after being discharged from a hospital stay. This measure uses data from Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) for the reporting period July 1, 2022 – June 30, 2023. A hospital’s rating is based on the percentage of Medicare patients, age 65 and older who had an unplanned readmission to the hospital within 30 days of being treated and released from an earlier hospital stay. The scores are risk-adjusted, meaning they account for a patient’s age and how sick they were when they were hospitalized. A lower number is better.
