| Assuming this data is from the Medicare (insurance program for those >65) dataset released by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid services earlier this year (http://go.cms.gov/1bowKJA) I have a couple of points to make: 1.) Not sure if you grabbed "charges" or "payments", but "charges" are what the providers (hospitals) billed to Medicare, and "payments" are what Medicare actually paid the providers. "Payments" would be the best indicator of "price". 2.) Regardless of whether you are using "charges" or "payments", it's pretty much irrelevant for the average person. Why? Because the patient never pays the full amount (except for the uninsured...see below). 3.) While you don't pay the full amount in most cases, you will have to pay something. However, what you actually pay varies WIDELY based on your health insurer (the "payor") and the design of the health insurance plan. 4.) Also note that every "payor" negotiates a different price, so the Medicare price does not equal the Commercial Insurance price which does not equal the Medicaid price which does not equal the price the uninsured person pays. 5.) Finally, the diagnostic/procedural terminology in this dataset is impenetrable to most people. For example, does anyone on HN know what "transient ischemia" is? And if you do, do you understand that you can have transient ischemia in many parts of your body (FTR, I'm an MD)? Although I appreciate the effort and the clean visualization, I don't think this data is particularly useful to an individual trying to make health care decisions for reasons 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 (and probably others that I'm missing). The one place where this data may be useful on an individual level is in the case of the uninsured. When you have no insurance the hospital basically makes up a price (taken from something called the "chargemaster") that is way more than what commercial insurance would pay, and WAY WAY more than what Medicare would pay. Having access to this data might help an uninsured person negotiate a lower price when the hospital comes after you with a giant bill. Medicare is a pretty solid standard to compare to - i.e. "you're charging me 5X, whereas you would only charge Medicare X". On a societal level I think this data is also extremely valuable because now you can start to analyze pricing disparities across procedure types and geographies, which is really helpful. You can also put pressure on providers who are gouging individuals paying sticker price (i.e. the uninsured), which is important given that medical bills drive the majority of personal bankruptcies. We ran a competition on this topic recently at Health 2.0 and you can learn more about the issue and the datasets on our site. You can also view other visualizations of this very important data: http://www.health2con.com/devchallenge/rwjf-hospital-price-t... Transparency in health pricing is a very important topic and something you'll hear a lot more about in the future. Happy to discuss further with anyone who wants to learn more (@jeanlucneptune, jeanlucneptune@gmail.com). |
1. We used the 'Average Payment' for the actual number shown on the site. 2. Even though it's irrelevant, but it actually goes back to you by your co-pay and other expenses to you. Not 100% sure though. The point in our app is that, we want to compare the price vs quality in the US top hospitals. They actually vary a lot. 3,4 I agree. Co-pay is what you pay mostly. 5. We cleaned up the procedure names manually, and matched the procedure related specialties to the hospital specialty ranking made by US News, and it gives much better perspective to the users.
Nice to see people doing more health related stuff out there!