Call Your Representative to Express concerns About Proposed Stroke Measure

You'll have to see what you want to do with this. From the

Burke Rehab Center, White Plains, NY

http://www.burke.org/media/news/2013/07/call-your-representative-to-express-concerns-about/108
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has proposed adding two new stroke outcome measures—a 30-day acute ischemic stroke mortality measure and a 30-day acute ischemic stroke hospital readmission measure—to its hospital Inpatient Quality Reporting program, as part of its FY2014 hospital inpatient prospective payment system proposed rule. The American Heart Association/American Stroke Association and many other patient and provider organizations have very serious concerns about CMS's proposal. In addition, neither of these measures have been endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF). In fact, the NQF rejected the stroke hospital readmission measure last fall, and CMS withdrew the stroke mortality measure from NQF consideration.
We believe these measures are fatally flawed because they do not adjust for stroke severity—the single most important variable for determining whether a stroke patient has a good outcome or not.  This concern was validated by a paper published in JAMA last summer that found that 58 percent of hospitals would be misclassified if the stroke mortality measure is not adjusted to account for stroke mortality. If these measures aren't fixed before being implemented, they could unfairly penalize hospitals caring for the most severe stroke patients, worsen health disparities, and undermine the work many of us have been doing to implement stroke systems of care in our communities and regions.
 And if we had objective diagnosis of stroke severity this could be solved.
More at link.