Grade B, Good Value

B-grade hospitals score 65 to 79 on the Value Score, indicating a favorable balance of cost and reported quality measures relative to the national distribution. As with all aggregate scores, a B grade summarizes data but does not capture individual case fit.

These hospitals score 65-79 on the Value Score, indicating a favorable balance of cost and reported CMS quality measures. The Value Score is editorial — built on top of public Medicare payment data and CMS Hospital Compare quality measures — and it is a starting reference, not a clinical recommendation. CMS Hospital Compare publishes its own federal star rating that is independent of price.

Average payments in the Grade B cohort runs modestly below the national Medicare payment baseline, about 13% under the national average. Below-average payments often reflect a mix of competitive local markets, lower wage indexes, or a less complex case mix.

Within the cohort, hospital-to-hospital variation reflects regional Medicare wage indexes, case mix, teaching status, and outlier-payment adjustments — the same drivers that move pricing across every CMS DRG. 1268 hospitals fall under Grade B hospitals — one of the largest cohorts in the dataset, where aggregates closely track the national hospital population.

For non-Medicare patients, the more relevant figure than the Medicare average is the negotiated commercial rate or cash-pay rate, published by every hospital under the CMS Hospital Price Transparency Rule.

Average CMS Hospital Compare star rating across the Grade B cohort is 3.8, with 595 hospitals carrying a 4-star rating. CMS publishes the underlying mortality, readmission, safety, infection, and patient-experience domain measures alongside the composite — useful when a Value Score grade does not match expectations from the headline star rating.

For deeper clinical context, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) Patient Safety Indicators and Inpatient Quality Indicators feed many of these CMS measures and are useful for comparing acute-care facilities directly.