The Next Chapter In Transparency: Maryland ’s Wear The Cost

Historically, the State of Maryland’s per capita health spending has been substantially higher than the national average. In an attempt to control health care costs, the state has been administering an all-payer rate setting system for Maryland hospitals—fixing the rates for Medicare and private payers—for more than 40 years. Regardless of one’s view of the desirability of these regulatory interventions, the Maryland system has been unable to address the wide disparity among providers in terms of both price and quality. In an effort to address this disparity, Maryland is launching a new initiative to make information on the price and quality of health care more accessible to consumers through the website Wear the Cost. With the platform, the state has taken a decidedly different approach to improving transparency—one that engages consumers in a direct and ongoing conversation about health care costs, particularly the wide disparity among providers in terms of price and quality. This is important because there is still a significant amount of variation in episode costs among facilities in Maryland. To be sure, compared to other states Maryland’s overall variation in the episode costs of selected procedures is lower, and the average prices, for the most part, are also lower (see Exhibit 1). But performance on quality measures is not better than other states, and on both quality and cost, there is still plenty of room for improvement. Exhibit 1: Compariso...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Costs and Spending Quality Maryland Maryland Health Care Commission wear the cost Source Type: blogs