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Please check back periodically as we will be adding to the list.
Health Care Price Transparency:
A Strategic Perspective for State Government Leaders
Produced by the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. Good overview document emphasizing consumer surveys. This article emphasizes Secretary Leavitt's four cornerstones:
- Connectivity
- Measuring and publishing quality information
- Measuring and publishing pricing information
- Creating positive incentives
Of FloridaCompareCare.gov, the report states: The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration’s (AHCA) redesigned web site is the first step in an ambitious program. This site ultimately will give Florida’s health care consumers, purchasers and professionals an unprecedented degree of easy-to-access and understandable information on quality, pricing and performance. Florida Compare Care consists of two adjoining web sites that disseminate comparative health care information to consumers. The MyFloridaHealthStat web site displays price and quality information for hospital services based on risk-adjusted DRG codes. The MyFloridaRx site conveys information on prescription drugs, and anecdotal evidence shows that it is working to lower costs. For example, in Miami-Dade County there was a dramatic decrease in the range of retail prices for the drug Neurontin since the introduction of the price comparison web site. Florida has plans to begin reporting comparative information for health plans and individual physicians in the near future.
John Colmers. Public Reporting and Transparency.
Commonwealth Fund. February 6, 2007.
Excellent summary of the influence of public reporting on transparency.
Could U.S. Hospitals Go The Way Of U.S. Airlines? Altman et. al. Health Affairs, 25, no. 1 (2006): 11-21. Abstract: The market for hospital services, like global markets in general, is becoming more competitive. Increased price transparency and focused competition can squeeze out inefficiencies, restraining prices and making some consumers better off. But competition can have a dark side. U.S. hospitals can treat Medicare and Medicaid patients at less than cost, care for the uninsured, and provide other money-losing services because they can cross-subsidize. By 2025 the need for general hospitals to cross-subsidize will greatly in-crease, but their ability to do so will be diminished. U.S. hospitals could begin to resemble U.S. airlines: severely cutting costs, eliminating services, and suffering financial instability.
David Leonhardt. Sometimes, What’s Needed Is a Nudge - New York Times May 16, 2007. This article describes the area of libertarian paternalism in the context of an upcoming book by Cass Sunstein and Richard Thaler tentatively called "Nudge." It describes how making information available in understandible ways makes consumer choices more logically.
Redefining Competition in Health Care
[http://harvardbusinessonline.hbsp.harvard.edu/b02/en/common/item_detail.jhtml?id=6964]
Committee members will be provided
with a copy
and others can purchase one from the HBR site.
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