In 2006, employers, managed care plans, trade groups, state governments and federal agencies took an aggressive role in bringing pricing and outcomes data to the public. It looks like the transparency trend that took center stage last year will continue to expand, as CMS announced yesterday that it would post hospitals' heart attack and heart failure death rates on the web. But rather than posting actual death rates, the government will compare hospitals and let patients know if a particular hospital performs better, worse, or on par with the national average. CMS hopes posting the data will be a wake-up call to under-performing hospitals. "If we could get the higher-mortality hospitals to achieve the performance of lower-mortality hospitals, we could save probably 10,000 or more lives a year," notes one analyst involved with the project. The website will be available to the public in June.
For more on CMS's move:
- read this report from USA Today