CMS Makes Hospital Payment Information Available
As first announced in March, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is publishing the costs it pays hospitals for 30 common elective procedures and other hospital admissions. This includes operations such as hip replacements, prostate removals and neck fusions to join neck bones. CMS says it will post payment information for common elective procedures of ambulatory surgery centers later this summer and common hospital outpatient and physician services this fall. The data is available in a large Excel (zipped) file. Significant price variation can be seen for some procedures, confirming a recent study about surgeon costs. Data spans fiscal year 2005 (ended on September 30, 2005) and are aggregated at the county, state and national level. Besides costs, the spreadsheet features the volume of procedures per hospital.
Even though some manufacturers are fighting it, hospital price transparency just made a clear step forward.
June 1, 2006 Related topics: Trends