Webinar Recording Now Available: New Hospital Pricing Data: What it Says, What it Means

With an eye toward greater transparency, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released data on the prices that more than 3000 hospitals charge for the 100 most common inpatient procedures.  These 2011 data underscore the wide variation among hospital prices across the country and within communities.  For example, average inpatient charges for services a hospital may provide in connection with a joint replacement range from a low of $5,300 at a hospital in Ada, Okla., to a high of $223,000 at a hospital in Monterey Park, Calif.  These data also show that hospital charges for similar services can vary significantly even within the same geographic area.

As part of an ongoing effort to showcase important sources of data, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation joined CMS in offering a May 15 webinar on best practices in using analytics to transform data into actionable information. The webinar provided an overview of the data source, including what led CMS to produce the data, how the data may be accessed, and high level methodology.  A panel of experts offered their reactions and answered questions from webinar participants.

Moderator:

• Susan Dentzer - Senior Policy Advisor, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Presenter:

• Niall Brennan – Director, CMS Office of Information Products and Data Analytics

Discussants:

• Uwe Reinhardt - James Madison Professor of Political Economy, Princeton University
• Suzanne Delbanco – Executive Director, Catalyst for Payment Reform

A recording of the webinar is available here:

http://www.academyhealth.org/Training/ResourceDetail.cfm?ItemNumber=1126... [1]