The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid (CMS) ended 2017 by revising the ratings hospitals depend on as bellwethers for their reputation with patients, payers and regulators alike.

CMS’s hospital star ratings are calculated from data on 7 care-quality indicators: mortality, safety of care, readmissions, patient experience, effectiveness of care, timeliness of care and efficient use of medical imaging.

The agency’s new formula for determining star ratings addresses what had been a significant bell curve of hospitals with stars ranging from 1 to 5 (with 5 being the highest rating). Previously, few hospitals had 1 or 5 stars; most had 2, 3 or 4.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) gave hospitals an early holiday gift with its recent decision to provide Medicare coverage for outpatient total knee replacements.

In November, CMS removed total knee arthroplasty (TKA) from its inpatient-only list, effectively allowing eligible Medicare patients to have the surgery in hospital outpatient departments beginning January 2018. It did not, however, add TKAs to its list of payable procedures at ambulatory surgical centers (ASCs).

That gives hospitals an important head start on a growing outpatient competitor lobbying hard for the federal agency’s blessing.

CMS has said it will continue to review the safety and feasibility of total joint replacements at ASCs, language that usually signals more change is coming. If the agency does eventually cover the procedures at ASCs, it will pose a significant threat to hospital revenue.

4 Traits of Health Content That Engages and Satisfies

Patient education can be one of healthcare providers’ most effective tools in today’s value-based care systems. By setting patient expectations, promoting behavior change and measuring adherence to a care plan, it can improve outcomes and have financial benefits.

At UbiCare, we call this kind of patient education “architected” content because of the research, thought and strategy that goes into its construct. It’s designed to engage patients, improve care outcomes and increase satisfaction for patients and healthcare providers alike.

No matter what you call it, patient engagement technology fueled by evidence-based, carefully “architected” content has several important elements.

"Why wouldn’t we build our own patient engagement solution in-house?”

It’s a question we hear often enough from hospital and health system marketers that we figured we should blog about it.  

While you could, in theory, build a homegrown digital health tool for engaging patients, it makes more sense to choose a company that has been doing this successfully and proving its effectiveness and value for the past 15 years. Such as ... ahem ... one company I know.

Here are 5 good reasons why: