Siddiqui ZK, et al. – With the aim of making information about hospital quality understandable for patients, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services publicly report star ratings for hospitals based on patient experience performance via the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Provider and Systems (HCAHPS) survey. The star rating system, however, may not be intuitive or aid consumer choice. In the hotel industry, higher star ratings are indicative of greater or superior services. It’s not clear whether there is a similar association between hospital star ratings and the range of available services. Researchers thus compared the structural characteristics and clinical services provided by hospitals that received 5-star patient experience ratings with those that did not. They also assessed the proportion of hospitals ranked in the top 5% for each state (according to US News & World Report), which is a commonly understood consumer-based metric for hospital quality.