How to Find the Best Medicare Providers?
Healthcare is diverse. It can be hard and overwhelming to make a decision, whether you're looking for a clinician, a hospital, a nursing home for yourself, or a loved one. That's why correct and reliable information is so crucial to have.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has developed a range of comparison resources to better assist Medicare beneficiaries in handling this. We explain these particular tools in this article that provide a variety of quality data to help find facilities and providers:
- Hospital Compare, a guide to help compare the local hospitals
- Physician Compare, an instrument to help compare doctors approved by Medicare
- Nursing Home Compare, a guide for comparing the area's nursing homes
These resources are maintained exclusively by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and are fully free to use to find Medicare-accepting healthcare providers in your area. Importantly, these resources are for information purposes only and you should always ensure that any Medicare-eligible provider you choose is comfortable with you.
What is Hospital Compare?
At over 4,000 Medicare-certified hospitals around the country, including over 130 Veterans Administration (VA) medical centers, Hospital Compare has details about the quality of care. To find hospitals and compare the quality of their care, you can use Hospital Compare. Hospital Compare was developed in partnership with organizations representing consumers, hospitals, physicians, employers, accreditation organizations, and other federal agencies through the efforts of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).
The Hospital Compare information is intended to assist consumers:
Helps hospitals to boost their quality of care
Take decisions on whether you are getting healthcare
You can head to the nearest hospital in an emergency. So you should plan ahead, and discuss with your health care provider the details you find here to decide which hospital can better suit your health care needs.
Hospital Compare directly from CMS, click here
What is Physician Compare?
Physician Compare lets you identify and compare Medicare-enrolled physicians and organizations so that you can make educated decisions about your healthcare.
Physician Compare offers up-to-date clinician information to assist you in comparing them.
On some clinician and community profile pages, Physician Compare also has performance information available. Knowledge of results will explain how well physicians and associations deliver the highest level of treatment for patients.
Physician Compare profile pages listing clinician and community information, such as contact and location information.
As required by the Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) developed Physician Compare in 2010. Additional guidelines for the Physician Compare website were issued by the Medicare and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA). We work tirelessly to make sure that the website is quick to use and provides the most valuable information to help you locate doctors to meet your healthcare needs. Physician Compare performance reviews help you make educated choices and also encourage physicians to offer the best treatment for you.
Physician Compare directly from CMS, click here
What is Nursing Home Compare?
Nursing Home Compare helps you to identify and compare the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS) certified nursing homes). This website provides quality statistics on resident care and staffing for more than 15,000 nursing homes around the country. Nursing homes provide people who can't be cared for at home with professional care and require 24-hour nursing care. Skilled treatment requires skilled nursing or rehabilitation programs for the supervision, observation, or evaluation of the care of a patient. Occupational therapy, wound care, intravenous (IV) medications, and physical therapy is examples of professional care.
You can learn from the details on Nursing Home Compare:
- How much their residents care for nursing homes
- Nursing homes that have had problems with the prevention of violence
- How health and fire safety checks have been carried out by nursing homes
- Nursing homes that have had substantial enforcement problems for the security of resident health and safety and are part of the Special Focus Facility (SFF) Program
- How the nursing home is staffed by nurses and other providers of health care
Nursing Home Compare directly from CMS, click here.
Always have the details reviewed. But since data can alter at any time, you should always contact the clinician or organization to check general details, including location(s), whether new patients are being admitted, and whether the Medicare-approved payment amounts are accepted. These tools developed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid services are often meant to help patients and their families make more informed choices, but they do not want these tools to be considered an endorsement by any individual provider, hospital, or facility.
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