Hospital Rating System Delayed

As the story goes,”bowing to pressure from the hospital industry and Congress, the Obama administration on Wednesday delayed releasing its new hospital quality rating measure just a day before its planned launch”. I find that interesting because these same hospitals, who are the major employers of physicians in this country, have no problem with doctors being rated and being “metricized”.  What was their beef? Well, it seems that they didn’t like the fact that “many of these measures are technical and confusing since hospitals often do well on some and poorly on others”.  This is an issue of both hypocrisy and power.  Hospitals are hypocritical because what is good for the goose should be good for the gander.  And we are the proverbial goose. It is also about power because we have none and the hospitals have a ton of it.  The hospitals got 60 senators and 225 members of the House of Representatives to letters urging CMS to delay the ratings.  We doctors had…..no one.  Thanks AMA.  Thanks AAFP.