Your hospital’s quality ratings aren’t just metrics – they’re a public statement about your hospital’s leadership team. As the CMO or CQO, when those ratings change, your board members, physicians, and community will look to you for answers. And with quality scores increasingly tied to both reputation and reimbursement, the stakes have never been higher.
As healthcare becomes increasingly transparent, your organization’s reputation and market position depend on staying ahead of quality ratings changes. Like other CMOs and CQOs we work with, you need more than just updates about ratings programs – you need strategic insight to drive decisions. Before sharing changes with your board or realigning resources, you want to understand exactly how these updates will impact your hospital’s performance and market position.
Before we get into the details, you are probably most interested in a projection of your hospital’s 2025 star rating. To get right to it, our interactive dashboard below lets you quickly find your hospital using the state and facility filters, showing both your current 2024 stars and projected 2025 performance.
Timing: What You Need to Know Now
As a quality leader preparing updates for your board, you’ll want to note that within the first few days of 2025, CMS (2025) announced significant changes to the hospital stars program. Your 2025 stars will be public three months earlier than expected. As an experienced quality leader, you’re already planning how to adjust your communication timeline and stakeholder briefings.
In 2025, CMS will release updated stars in April instead of July. While CMS frames this as supporting transparency, you know this means less time to prepare your communications strategy and brief your leadership team on the results.
This accelerated timeline also means a shift in which data CMS will use. Instead of using January Care Compare data as they have for years, CMS will use October 2024 data for the 2025 stars. This is why our dashboard above uses the October dataset to project your hospital’s performance – we want you to have the same view CMS will use.
Measure Changes: What’s Actually Important
Before you update your hospital’s senior executives, here’s what you really need to know about the measure changes in the Timely & Effective Care domain (which drives 15% of your star score).
Most importantly, these changes are unlikely to significantly impact your hospital’s overall rating. Here’s why:
- Two measures are being removed (OP-2 and OP-3b), but they were barely used anyway. Less than 100 hospitals reported OP-2 scores, and less than 10% of hospitals had eligible OP-3b scores in recent releases.
- There’s one new measure to track, Safe Use of Opioids – Concurrent Prescribing. Unlike the removed measures, this one affects most hospitals – over 3,700 hospitals are already reporting it. It tracks the percentage of your adult inpatients discharged with multiple active opioid prescriptions (CMS, 2024).
While the new opioid measure won’t greatly affect your star rating, it signals CMS’s priorities. As you’re planning your quality initiatives for the year, you’ll want to ensure your opioid prescribing practices are getting appropriate attention.
What This Means for You and Your Hospital
Like other successful quality leaders, you know that staying ahead of CMS changes requires both technical knowledge and strategic planning. The earlier release date means the public will know your 2025 stars sooner. While the measure changes in the Timely & Effective Care domain are unlikely to significantly impact your overall rating, they reflect CMS’s continued emphasis on opioid safety and focus on measures with broad hospital participation.
To ensure you’re fully prepared for the accelerated April release, contact us now about a free consultation to review your projected 2025 stars and create an action plan tailored to your hospital’s unique quality story.
References:
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2024). Safe Use of Opioids – Concurrent Prescribing. eCQI Resource Center. https://ecqi.healthit.gov/ecqm/eh/2024/cms0506v6?qt-tabs_measure=measure-information
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. (2025, January 7). Overall Hospital Quality Star Rating 2025 Release Update Clarification [ListServ announcement]. https://qualitynet.cms.gov/files/67867d0450ed8df741a0e993?filename=2025-03-IP.pdf
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