Cedars-Sinai Again Earns Five-Star Rating From Federal Agency

Cedars-Sinai Medical Center again has earned a five-star hospital rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services—the highest distinction offered by the federal agency. It is the fourth year in a row that the academic medical center has been rated among the hospitals with the highest quality care in the U.S.

Of the 3,355 U.S. hospitals rated, only about 14% earned five stars, and only 3% of all rated hospitals earned five stars for the past four years. The ratings are based on 48 quality measurements that fall into five categories: mortality, safety, readmissions after treatment of common conditions, patient experience, and timely and effective care.

Found on Medicare's Care Compare website, the ratings of one to five stars provide consumers with a simple way to compare hospitals' quality and performance.

This year's top honor for Cedars-Sinai was once again driven by strong performance in mortality measures that track the rate of patient survival 30 days after hospitalization for common conditions such as pneumonia. The medical center also benefited from high marks in two new readmissions measures that CMS tracked this year—emergency department visits after outpatient chemotherapy and hospital visits after outpatient surgery—as well as improved ratings for patient experience measures, including communication with nurses and overall patient experience. 

The consistently low mortality rates are even more significant because of the very high severity of illness faced by so many of our patients, said Sharon Isonaka, MD, vice president of Clinical Transformation at Cedars-Sinai.

"It demonstrates our singular focus on providing the best care for every patient; this is a hospital where you would want your very ill family member to receive care," Isonaka said.

To ensure that all patients receive the high-quality care reflected in the hospital's star rating, Cedars-Sinai has initiated programs across the health system to promote health equity. Those efforts include collecting information on a patient's social conditions that affect their health—such as socioeconomic status, access to care, social support network—and measuring quality outcomes to ensure that Cedars-Sinai's delivery of healthcare addresses the needs of its diverse population.

"The five-star rating reflects many dimensions of quality, and we have to ensure that all of our patients experience that quality equally," Isonaka said.

Read more on the Cedars-Sinai Blog: Equitable, Personalized Care for Women and Children of Color