What Factors Influence Hospital Ratings? A Data Science Exploration

Introduction Hospital ratings help patients make informed healthcare decisions. In the United States, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) publish quality ratings for thousands of hospitals based on several performance indicators. In this analysis, I explored CMS hospital quality data to better understand what factors influence hospital ratings and whether machine learning can predict those ratings from hospital performance metrics. Questions I Wanted to Answer What factors influence hospital ratings? Can hospital ratings be predicted using hospital quality metrics? Which performance indicators matter the most? The Dataset The dataset comes from the CMS Provider Data catalog and includes information for more than 5,000 hospitals across the United States. The data contains several quality indicators related to: Mortality Patient safety Hospital readmissions Patient experience Timely and effective care Each hospital also has an overall rating from 1 to 5 stars . Exploring t