DETAILSHospital Price and Quality
Summary of Hospital Sites
Tools that allowed you to find a hospital did not commonly share price features; instead, most tools shared quality and overall site features:
QUESTION NUMBER | COMMON FEATURES | BENEFITS TO USERS | % OF SITES WITH FEATURE |
Q 13 | Information is Two Years Old or Less (from 2015, 2016 or 2017) | Recent data is more relevant for making health care decisions, and instills confidence and credibility in the data and the sponsoring organization | 86% |
Q 18 | Information Available in Printer-Friendly Formats | Enhances access to information offline and makes it easier for users to share with a facility, provider or insurance company | 81% |
Q 22 | Describes the Quality Methodology | Instills credibility in the data by describing how the hospital quality data was collected and analyzed | 77% |
Q 41 | View Information for Hospitals Side by Side | Quickly compare locations, performance and other information for hospitals in single view | 74% |
Q 11 | Provides Comparative Benchmarks (compared to an average, best practice, etc.) | Provides a baseline for comparing hospital performance with other hospitals regionally or nationally | 70% |
Q 9 | Uses Non-Technical “Plain English” Language for Lay Consumers | Limits cognitive burden; and, when integrated with website user interface design, allows users to drill down to the level of detail they are most interested in | 65%
|
S 15 | Summary View with All a Hospital’s Information in One Place | Users get a snapshot of overall performance | 62% |
Q 10 | Information about “Better Performers” and “Poorer Performers” | Users get a visual snapshot of performance via evaluative symbols such as stars, rankings, grades, etc., which reduces cognitive burden and makes it easier to compare hospitals | 54% |
None of the tools include a pricing calculator or allow users to enter a plan from their insurance carrier or link to their data from an insurance carrier.
Hospital Sites with the Most Features
Of the 133 tools and 62 features reviewed, four incorporate the most features: Hospital Report Cards (37), The Hospital Guide (37), Illinois Hospital Report Card (36), and California Healthcare Compare (35). Hospital Report Cards is a top-ranking tool for the number of price features available, as is The Hospital Guide for quality-specific features. These tools set themselves apart from others by sourcing data other than CMS data; allowing lookup by hospital and procedure; reporting recent price information for hospitals and procedures; displaying prices side by side, including the non-insurance/cash price; showing comparative benchmarks, and detailing the methodology and source of the price data. Additionally, users can access a summary view with all a hospital’s information; filter and sort quality information; view information on patient surveys; and access other information to assist in decision making.
While some clinical quality of care information is available, the number of measures reported on can be expanded. Additionally, the tools would benefit from using non-technical “plain English” language, indicating when the quality information was last updated and providing comparative quality benchmarks and multiple years of quality data.
Price Specific Features
As mentioned, Hospital Report Cards incorporates the most price-related features, closely followed by CompareMaine. Like the sites with the most Trues overall, these tools share the important features and opportunities for improvement as outlined above.
Quality Specific Features
With respect to quality-specific features, three tools incorporated the most features: The Hospital Guide, Illinois Hospital Report Card, and Washington State MONAHRQ (WaMONAHRQ). Similar to the sites with most Trues overall, these tools share the important features, with the addition of displaying charges or costs of any type, reporting clinical quality of care information for multiple measures and years of performance, and indicating when the data was last updated.
The table below highlights the clinical quality of care measures evaluated and the percentage of hospital sites that incorporate them:
QUESTION NUMBER | CLINICAL QUALTIY OF CARE MEASURE | % OF SITES WITH MEASURE |
Q 54 | Other | 43% |
Q 48 | Heart Care | 42% |
Q 51 | Orthopedics | 35% |
Q 50 | Maternity Care | 24% |
Q 53 | Stroke | 23% |
Q 47 | Emergency Department | 20% |
Q 52 | Preventive Care | 11% |
Q 49 | Imaging | 9% |
Q 46 | Cancer | 6% |
133 Sites Inventoried
62 Total Features Evaluated
32 Price Specific Features
27 Quality Specific Features
The following sites have either Price or Quality Information about Hospitals in the U.S. Very few have both in the same site.
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