MARIA CASTELLUCCI January 23, 2020
The CMS
announced Thursday that the eight online tools designed for Medicare
beneficiaries and their caregivers to make healthcare choices will be combined
later this year.
The
agency said the changes will allow users to have a "streamlined
experience" on Medicare.gov.
Right
now, patients and families must use different interfaces on the Medicare
website based on the care setting they are interested in. The CMS has the
option, called Compare tools, for hospitals, nursing homes, home health,
dialysis centers, long-term care hospitals, inpatient rehabilitation, physicians
and hospice groups.
The tools
allow patients to look up organizations or physicians and their respective
quality data.
The CMS
said the independent functionality of each Compare tool "makes them
difficult and challenging to navigate." Additionally, some of the tools
look different from others. The CMS said the changes will offer more
consistency in terms of "look and feel."
The
agency will be reaching out to stakeholders in the coming weeks to get their
feedback on the changes to the website before it launches. Stakeholders include
patients and providers. The CMS said it will continue to make changes before
and after the launch "as part of our iterative improvement process."
In
addition to the changes to Medicare.gov, the CMS announced it's working on developing
a new online portal to access CMS data. According to the agency, the new
interface will have "intuitive search features to allow users to easily
search and download CMS's publicly reported data, better serving stakeholders
who use the interactive and downloadable datasets."
The new
interface will be on CMS.gov.
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