Quality & Safety

MUSC Health is committed to providing high-quality, evidence-based, and patient-centered care; we believe it is important that our patients and families feel confident they are receiving the very best care. However, online ratings of healthcare can be confusing and conflicting. To help with this, here we provide an overview and explanation of our quality ratings from independent, third-party sources. While there is no perfect rating system, we believe transparency and data sharing is always best, and inspires our teams to continuously improve. We welcome any questions you have about our ratings, or your individual care. For concerns about your care, contact our Patient and Family Liaison team, who can help at 843-792-5555.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS)

CMS publishes a variety of quality metrics including patient satisfaction scores, timeliness and effectiveness of care, complications and death, unplanned readmissions, psychiatric services, and cost of care. This information can be searched by hospital, and each “tab” on the site provides more detailed information of performance, including the timeline and definition of data used. CMS goes further to take some of the metrics and convert to a “star rating” for overall performance. These star ratings are updated about twice a year, although there have been some delays due to calculation updates, as well as ongoing controversy over the fairness of the star ratings (which tend to rate academic and teaching hospitals, such as MUSC Health, lower). Not all hospitals are ranked based on all quality metrics, as some smaller and specialty hospitals do not have all the metrics available to report.

Visit Medicare.gov and use their Hospital Compare tool.  

Leapfrog

Leapfrog publishes a variety of quality metrics including infections, problems with surgery, practices to prevent errors, safety problems, and patient satisfaction scores. The information can be searched by hospital, and each “tab” on the site provides more detailed information of performance, including the timeline and definition of data used. Leapfrog goes further to take some of the metrics and convert to a “letter grade” which is seen as a range from an “A” to an “F”. These letter grades are updated twice a year in the spring and the fall. Not all hospitals are ranked, as some smaller and specialty hospitals do not have all the metrics available to report.

Check out the Leapfrog Group's Compare Hospital tool.

US News and World Report

US News and World Report publishes quality and safety metrics and an overall ranking by specialty in both adult and pediatric specialties. The adult rankings include 16 specialties, and includes a variety of metrics including death rates, hospital infrastructure and patient volumes, hospital reputation from other physicians in the specialty, and patient satisfaction; 4 of the specialties are solely ranked based on reputation. The pediatric rankings include 10 specialties, and includes a variety of very detailed metrics which are specific to each specialty. The information can be searched by hospital, and each specialty is ranked in order (#1 being “the best”). Only academic-teaching hospitals are eligible for ranking within US News. 

Vizient

Vizient, Inc is an organization that provides services and solutions to most academic medical centers in the US, and publishes an annual ranking for inpatient and ambulatory services. The rankings include a variety of inpatient and ambulatory quality metrics, and ranks academic medical centers in order (#1 being “the best”). Vizient goes to great lengths to risk adjust their metrics, to allow for an “apples to apples” comparison between academic health centers. Although these rankings are not widely published, in 2019 MUSC Health was ranked #56 in inpatient care and #11 in ambulatory care in the US.

MUSC Health is an Accountable Care Organization (ACO)

Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) are coordinated groups of caregivers who voluntarily partner to provide high quality care to the Medicare patients they serve.

View our most recent ACO report.