The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services has finally made publicly available hospital-specific charges for the more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payments. The data represents almost 7 million discharges or 60 percent of total Medicare IPPS discharges. Hospitals have protected their price lists or “charge masters” from public disclosure and by means of contractual confidentiality restrictions. CMS’s disclosure of this data were inspired in part by a March 2013 Time magazine investigative report on hospital charges authored by Steven Brill, which attracted extensive media attention and discussion.
CMS hopes that users of the data will be able to make comparisons between the amount charged by individual hospitals within local markets, and nationwide, for services that might be furnished in connection with a particular inpatient stay. CMS shared the data in advance with media outlets such as The Huffington Post, The New York Times and The Washington Post. Each of these outlets have published stories based on their analysis. Entities such as ACO’s may find this data useful as they seek to deliver better patient care on limited budgets in order to produce shared savings.
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