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The Weekly Quality Brief: Star Rating Patient Experience Updates, Safety of Care Caps, and SEP-1 Abstraction Guidance

The Weekly Quality Brief: Star Rating Patient Experience Updates, Safety of Care Caps, and SEP-1 Abstraction Guidance

The Weekly Quality Brief
• 21 min
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In this episode of The Weekly Quality Brief, Bailee Schleisman and Kristin Pergola answer questions from healthcare quality professionals about recent updates to Hospital Star Ratings, OAS CAHPS reporting, and abstraction guidance for the severe sepsis measure. They review how CMS updated patient experience scoring in the 2026 Star Ratings methodology, explain how the Safety of Care cap can affect final Star Rating scores, and clarify how the Medisolv Star Rating Analyzer evaluates measure performance. The discussion also covers how OAS CAHPS reporting relates to both reimbursement and patient experience scoring, how hospitals should approach PC-06 abstraction when newborn care occurs across co-located facilities, and how Quality Academy program graphs count total measure submissions. Additional questions focus on severe sepsis abstraction rules, including IV antibiotic timing requirements and whether antibiotic selection affects compliance with the SEP-1 measure.