Healthcare data website launched
12/11/2008
By Liz Kowalczyk, The Boston Globe Massachusetts residents can now search a new website to compare the cost and quality of care at different hospitals, part of an ambitious state plan to help control healthcare costs by giving consumers more information. The site, www.mass.gov/myhealthcareoptions, gives consumers access to previously confidential information about how much insurers pay individual hospitals for surgical procedures such as knee and hip replacements and for treating illnesses such as pneumonia. It also allows comparisons of patient satisfaction ratings and patient safety measures at different hospitals. The website was required as part of the state's mandatory health insurance law. More than 442,000 people have enrolled in health insurance programs since 2006, and Massachusetts now has the smallest percentage of uninsured adults in the country, but the cost of the subsidized insurance is rising fast. "Transparency is vitally important in both controlling costs and improving quality in the healthcare industry," Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, secretary of Health and Human Services, said yesterday in a written statement. "While it remains to be seen how improved access to price and quality information will impact decision-making, our hope is that the website will empower consumers to spend healthcare dollars more efficiently and motivate providers to improve quality and decrease their costs." Bigby is chairwoman of the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council, which oversees the site. The council collected payment data from all private health insurers in the state. The information made public yesterday is similar to the data that The Boston Globe Spotlight Team used for its report last month about how a handful of hospitals are paid far more than others for doing the same work, even when there is no evidence that the costlier care produces healthier patients. The Globe reported that Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Children's Hospital, Boston, and a few others are, on average, paid about 15 percent to 60 percent more than their rivals by insurers such as Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The gap is even more striking for individual procedures, which can be two or three times more expensive in one hospital than in another.
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