Transparency — Bring it on

On Friday, my old agency released a report entitled “Measuring Health Care Quality and Cost in Massachusetts.”  The report can be found here:  http://www.statehousenews.com/qualitycost.pdf.  This report is full of really useful information on quality and costs for various procedures at hospitals in Massachusetts.   Unfortunately the report received very little press and consumers probably don’t even know it is available.  The information can also be found on the consumer website, developed by the Health Care Quality and Cost Council. 

This new report allows you to see a profile of a  hospital’s indicators on one page and allows you to compare all hospitals in the state (compared to the website which only allows you to compare 4 hospitals at a time).   This is particularly interesting with costs which have huge variation from one hospital to the next.  Transparency has clearly been on the backburner for awhile now……but it’s time we shine a light on the variability present in the system.