Health junction

A Consumer Viewpoint on Discerning Hospital Value for Knee Replacements This article explains how information from CMS, a government agency can help you decide where to have your next knee replacement. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid provide regular reliable information on hospital safety metrics and pricing, both for gross hospital charges and for net reimbursements. For many health care consumers, it is the gross charge figure which is of concern, because if you have private insurance or God-forbid-are-uninsured, what you actually pay for your health care procedure will be based on this number. Since workers and families are so much more mobile now, it pays for the health care consumer to shop around for the best consumer value. Presently there are a number of Medicare and federal government initiatives addressing hospital price transparency, so I examined a number of CMS circulars to assess hospital data from 2011 for procedures and prices. The May 2013 CMS circular on Hospit...

Do you know what your doctor charges? What will your surgery cost? How does that hospital�s fee   compare to other facilities with comparable outcomes? Consumer driven health care means the health care purchaser seeks information, chooses the treatment facility, and pays for part or all of the cost, using publicly available information. This is referred to as health care transparency and last month�s article was on hospital price transparency. This article reviews the type of information that is available to health care purchasers and what some states are doing to promote public disclosure for the cost of health services. Look at the Nation According to the National Center for State Legislatures. March 18, 2013 Report Card on State Price Transparency Laws, the following states have passed laws mandating disclosure of hospital pricing information [1] : California- exempts small and rural hospitals and only requires a written copy of hospital charges on site for health care practiti...