Outpatient measures added to Hospital Compare website

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services have added new outpatient measures to their Hospital Compare website.

The measures that have been added include:

• High cost imaging measures, including the percentage of outpatients with low back pain who undergo an MRI before first trying recommended treatments including physical therapy, and the number of patients who received combination “double” scans of the abdomen or chest;
• Heart attack care measures, including the number of minutes between outpatients presenting with chest pain or myocardial infarction (MI) symptoms and undergoing an electrocardiogram;
• "Process of care" practices, including providing MI patients with aspirin at discharge

(Sources: The Advisory Board Daily Briefing, http://advisory.com, July 9, 2010; Hospital Compare website, http://hospitalcompare.hhs.gov)