Dive Brief:

• The four top recognized hospital ratings systems used by consumers contradict each other, use vastly different judging criteria and actually provide more confusion than clarity, according to a new study published by Health Affairs.
• Researchers from Harvard, Vanderbilt, Johns Hopkins and the University of California compared and analyzed four national ratings systems from US News & World Report, Consumer Reports, Healthgrades and The Leapfrog Group, and discovered very little overlap among their ratings. Moreover, some providers rated highly by one list were rated among the lowest on other lists, the study found.
• According to researchers, the rating systems varied in their foci, measures, methods and transparency, and were so inconsistent that very few hospitals got comparable ratings across the four. 

Dive Insight:

While both consumers and payers like healthcare ratings, it does little good to use them if they produce wildly-divergent results. But as the Health Affairs study concludes, that's just what seems to be going on at present.

Until ratings systems can be reconciled to offer at least some degree of consistency, they may actually do more harm than good. For example, a "false positive" rating may attract consumers to providers that actually face quality challenges, potentially risking patient harm. Also, as has been pointed out by critics many times in the past, such ratings are sometimes do an inadequate job of adjusting ratings for patient acuity, which can siphon payer contracts and patients away from struggling urban institutions.

As the HealthAffairs researchers noted, it could be very beneficial to increase transparency for each listing, so consumers can have a clearer understanding of how the rankings are calculated and achieved. Without such context, they are unlikely to benefit much from researching provider quality.