Standardized Hospitalization Ratio for Dialysis Facilities (SHR)

The standardized hospitalization ratio is defined to be the ratio of the number of hospital admissions that occur for Medicare ESRD dialysis patients treated at a particular facility to the number of hospitalizations that would be expected given the characteristics of the dialysis facility’s patients and the national norm for dialysis facilities. This measure is calculated as a ratio but can also be expressed as a rate.

When used for public reporting, the measure calculation will be restricted to facilities with greater than 5 patient years at risk in the reporting year. This restriction is required to ensure patients cannot be identified due to small cell size.