CMS on July 31 updated its Hospital Compare website with new Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) summary star ratings.

Cheat sheet: How CMS calculates its patient experience summary star ratings

CMS' summary star rating scores hospitals on a one-to-five-star scale based on the 10 publicly reported measures in the HCAHPS survey, which assesses patient experiences. The agency started assigning hospitals patient experience star ratings based solely on HCAHPS scores in April 2015. The latest update is based on HCAHPS survey data collected between Jan. 1, 2019, and Dec. 31, 2019.

The patient experience summary star ratings are distinct from CMS' overall quality star ratings, which the agency last updated in January. CMS currently is in the process of reworking its methodology for the overall quality star ratings and is not expected to update them again until sometime next year.

How hospitals fared on CMS' patient experience summary star ratings

CMS assigned an HCAHPS summary star rating to a total of 3,478 hospitals as of July 31. Of those hospitals:

• 266, or 8%, received five stars;
• 1,120, or 32%, received four stars;
• 1,479, or 43%, received three stars;
• 528, or 15%, received two stars; and
• 85, or 2%, received one star (CMS HCAHPS Stars Rating Distributions, July 2020; HCAHPS Star Ratings Technical Notes, accessed 8/7).