About Health Transparency

The quality of U.S. health care is slowly improving, while access to health care remains a great challenge for some Americans, especially racial and ethnic minorities and low-income people, according to AHRQ’s 2012 National Healthcare Quality Report and National Healthcare Disparities Report. The new reports call for “urgent attention” on continuing improvements in the quality of diabetes care, maternal and child health care, and treatment for conditions such as pressure ulcers and blood clots. Included in this year’s reports are new measures on early and adequate prenatal care, colorectal cancer screening, national rate of hospital-acquired conditions, standardized infection ratios at the state level for central line-associated bloodstream infections, and patient safety culture hospital survey findings. Quality and access data predate passage of the Affordable Care Act, which is addressing many of these issues. The reports are available online at http://www.ahrq.gov/research/findings/nhqrdr/index.html.

A New York Times analysis of 2011 data, the most recent available, a New Jersey hospital – the Bayonne Medical Center – charged the highest amounts in the country for nearly one-quarter of the most common hospital treatments. No other hospital was at the top of the price list more often. The New York Times cites an example where Bayonne Medical typically charged $99,689 for treating each case of chronic lung disease, 5.5 times as much as other hospitals and 17.5 times as much as Medicare paid in reimbursement.

Read full news article.

Interesting commentary by Dr. Cosgrove, President and CEO of the Cleveland Clinic, on transparency and a patient’s right to information as part of the Learning Health System Commentary Series of the IOM Roundtable on Value & Science-Driven Health Care.

For the 10th year in a row, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has produced the National Healthcare Quality Report (NHQR) and the National Healthcare Disparities Report (NHDR). These reports measure trends in effectiveness of care, patient safety, timeliness of care, patient centeredness, and efficiency of care. The reports present, in chart form, the latest available findings on quality of and access to health care.

National Healthcare Quality Report (PDF)

National Healthcare Disparities Report (PDF)

WhyNotTheBest.org’s interactive map has been updated to include the latest round of accountable care organizations (ACOs) to join Medicare’s Shared Savings Program—bringing the total to 219 groups around the nation. Users can track the spread of ACOs and other types of quality improvement activity and performance recognition through our series of map overlays.

Users can also use the map to explore performance variation among states, counties, and hospital referral regions on measures of health care quality, safety, outcomes, patient experiences, use of health information technology, and more.

For help using the map, watch this short video demo. Or check out this infographic showcasing performance variation across the nation.

The Leapfrog Group released Spring 2013 update to the Hospital Safety Score that assigns “A,” “B,” “C,” “D” or “F” grades to more than 2,500 general hospitals in the United States.  The update showed hospitals have made only incremental progress in addressing errors, accidents, injuries and infections that kill or hurt their patients. The scores for specific hospitals may be found at www.hospitalsafetyscore.org.

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The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid released provider charge data that show significant variation across the country and within communities in what hospitals charge for common inpatient services. The data provided include hospital-specific charges for the more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payments for the top 100 most frequently billed discharges, paid under Medicare based on a rate per discharge using the Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011. These DRGs represent almost 7 million discharges or 60 percent of total Medicare IPPS discharges. Hospitals determine what they will charge for items and services provided to patients and these charges are the amount the hospital bills for an item or service. The Total Payment amount includes the MS-DRG amount, bill total per diem, beneficiary primary payer claim payment amount, beneficiary Part A coinsurance amount, beneficiary deductible amount, beneficiary blood deducible amount and DRG outlier amount. For these DRGs, average charges and average Medicare payments are calculated at the individual hospital level. Users will be able to make comparisons between the amount charged by individual hospitals within local markets, and nationwide, for services that might be furnished in connection with a particular inpatient stay.

To download Provider Charge Data, visit http://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/Medicare-Provider-Charge-Data/index.html

The latest data update to the New York State Nursing Homes Profile Web site (nursinghomes.nyhealth.gov) has been published.

Included in this data update were:

• CMS quality data updated to reflect reporting periods through December 2012
• Facilities and services information updated
• Inspections, complaints, and enforcement data updated through March 2013
• Enforcement actions updated

The Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development (OSHPD) released  its latest report – “California Report on Coronary Artery Bypass Graft Surgery, 2009-2010,” – which found that California’s operative mortality rates have decreased 31% for patients undergoing coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery, The report  includes data collected from 120 California-licensed hospitals where 271 surgeons performed 12,548 adult isolated CABG surgeries in 2010. Performance ratings for the hospitals are based on three risk-adjusted outcomes: operative mortality, operative stroke, and unplanned hospital readmission.

Read full report at http://oshpd.ca.gov/HID/Products/Clinical_Data/CABG/10Breakdown.html

Kaiser Health News writes, for the first time the government will make information about financial relationships between doctors, teaching hospitals and drug manufacturers publicly available. To comply with a provision in the Affordable Care Act, drug and device manufacturers, along with group purchasing organizations, will have to disclose all of their payments and other compensation to physicians and teaching hospitals. The information will be gathered beginning in August and disclosed by Sept. 30, 2014 on a new website of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The site is part of the National Physician Payment Transparency Program, an effort to bring the financial relationships to light.