WASHINGTON, June 2 (UPI) -- At President Bush's behest, Medicare this week posted data on what it pays hospitals for common procedures.
As part of the administration's ongoing program of changes intended to increase transparency in healthcare pricing, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services posted information on what Medicare pays for 30 common elective procedures on its Web site.
Making such information available to the public will help rein in healthcare costs by empowering consumers to make better-informed decisions based on quality and price, the administration has argued.
Critics of such plans say that raw data can be misleading to consumers and gives doctors an incentive to only treat healthy patients.
"Once people gain better information, they become better consumers of health care and that helps get health care costs down and quality of care up," said Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. "The federal government is the biggest single purchaser of health care in America, and by taking steps to post prices and quality data, we hope to encourage more insurance companies, hospitals, clinics and doctors to do the same."
The site shows the range of payments by county and the number of cases treated at each hospital for a variety of treatments provided to seniors and people with disabilities in fiscal year 2005. These include procedures like heart operations and implanting cardiac defibrillators, hip and knee replacements, kidney and urinary-tract operations, gallbladder operations and back and neck operations, and for common non-surgical admissions.
The agency plans to post payment information for common elective procedures for ambulatory surgery centers later this summer, and common hospital outpatient and physician services this fall.
In addition, HHS has already published information comparing hospitals based on 17 quality criteria in partnership with the American Quality Alliance.
Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive officer of America's Health Insurance Plans, an industry group, said the move was in important step toward "making transparency real."
