Relationship between Hospital Characteristics and Value-Based Program Measure Performance: A Literature Review

Determining if the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid's value-based programs accurately represent the quality of care provided by acute-care hospitals is critical. We performed an integrative literature review to summarize research articles examining hospital characteristics associated with overall performance on the value-based program measures. The literature review was conducted by searching the PubMed and CINAHL databases. The initial search returned 18 relevant articles, 12 of which met all inclusion criteria. The emergent hospital characteristics that heavily influenced value-based program performance included size, safety-net status, geographical location, and teaching status. This review determined that many factors largely outside of acute-care hospitals' control create observed differences in value-based program performance. Additional factors such as a hospital's patient populations, socioeconomic status, and level of acuity may need to be considered prior to assigning financial penalties to under-performing hospitals.