Public reporting of cost and use information can help payers (including health plans and employers), providers (including hospitals and clinicians), and consumers (including patients and their families) have a better understanding of how much they are actually paying for health care.
RWJF Clinical Scholar G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS explores how patients and their physicians communicate about patients' out-of-pocket medical expenses and their impact.
Health care costs in America are such a mystery that often even doctors and most people who work in hospitals or clinics don’t know what they’re charging. In this commentary, Robert Graham, MD, National Program Director for AF4Q, and Michael W. Painter, JD, MD, Senior Program Officer at RWJF, offer their thoughts on the complex landscape of measuring health care cost and determining price in America.
This interactive repository features public reports that measure the quality and cost of care physicians and hospitals provide in communities across the country.
The cost for an appendectomy in California varies widely—anywhere from $1,500 to more than $180,000—even at the same hospital or within the same county, according to a study led by RWJF Physician Faculty Scholar Renee Y. Hsia, MD, MSc.
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As communities build on early efforts to share comparative data on health care costs and resource use, it is important to understand the perspective of all stakeholders–including doctors—to ensure everyone perceives the information as credible, valid, and helpful. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s 16 Aligning Forces for Quality alliances and other organizations across the country are working to improve the quality of care delivered in their communities, including through efforts to make information about cost and resource use available.
These two papers examine physician and consumer attitudes about publicly-reported information that compares the quality and/or cost of care delivered by different local medical providers, and considers how this information can be used to improve care quality and reduce health care costs.
Learn about AF4QImproving return on health care dollars through transparency depends on how well consumers are able to understand and appropriately apply comparative data to their health care decisions. Focus groups uncover insights on how to make health care cost and resource use information most useful for consumers.
Read moreWhile physicians interviewed did recognize that the costs of health care are a real concern for their patients and for the system as a whole, the interviews suggest they also have concerns about publicly reported information on cost and resource use.