According to a blog post today from CMS Administrator Seema Verma, CMS is planning to launch a new Medicare Care Compare on Medicare.gov. The new compare tool, which CMS plans to launch in Spring 2020, will combine the eight existing compare tools for Home Health, Hospice, Hospital, Nursing Home, Dialysis Facility, Long-Term Care Hospital, Inpatient Rehabilitation Facility, and Physician. Currently, these eight compare tools are among the most popular and utilized sections of the Medicare.gov website.
The new compare tool will be designed to allow “users to access the same information through a single point of entry and simplified navigation to find the information that is currently divided” among the eight separate Compare tools.
The reorganization is designed to “help patients find health care providers in different settings across the care continuum.” The eight compare tools currently function independently and with varying user interfaces, which CMS believes is confusing for the public and difficult to navigate.
According to Ms. Verma, “The new “Medicare Care Compare” on Medicare.gov will offer Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers and other users a consistent look and feel, providing a streamlined experience to meet their individual needs in accessing information about health care providers and care settings. In the new, unified experience, patients will be able to easily find the information that is most important to help make health care decisions, like getting quality data by the type of health care provider."
In addition, CMS is working on a “Provider Data Catalog” to enable researchers, stakeholders, and other users to easily search and download CMS’ publicly reported data. This new Provider Data Catalog will exist on CMS.gov and all data sets will be made available through an Application Programming Interface (API) from the Provider Data Catalog.