Finding consistency in Medicare's quality ratings for dialysis providers

As of January 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) now publishes two sets of quality rankings for dialysis facilities: performance ratings tied to the Quality Incentive Program (QIP), and "star ratings" published on the Dialysis Facility Compare website. We sought to compare the two ratings and see how consistent they are for a matched set of dialysis facilities that have ratings on both programs. While the two quality rating programs have somewhat different objectives, both ratings are made available to patients to assist them in understanding the quality of care they can expect to receive from a given dialysis facility. Consistency of the ratings will be important to their acceptance by both patients and providers as valid measures of relative quality.