Health care report cards and quality ratings are intended to give consumers more information when choosing a care provider like a hospital or nursing home. Health economist Marcelo Perraillon of the Colorado School of Public Health at CU Anschutz evaluated whether a simplified rating system used by the website Nursing Home Compare motivated consumers to choose better-rated nursing homes. Their results show that nursing homes that obtained an additional star on the one-to-five scale gained more admissions. They also identified that not all consumers responded to the change the same way, including low-rated nursing homes providing service in poorer areas which take mostly Medicaid patients. Researchers conclude that 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.
Read more:
- Consumer Response to Composite Ratings of Nursing Home Quality. American Journal of Health Economics. December 28, 2017