Relative price adds new metric to health care cost debate
The Center for Health Information and Analysis on May 2 released a new metric to account for differences in pricing among Bay State providers.
A state agency has for the first time reported a statewide relative price designed to account for differences in patient acuity, types of services health care providers deliver to patients, and the different product types that commercial insurance payers offer to their members.
The Center for Health Information and Analysis included the new metric Tuesday as it released its annual examination of price variation among providers in the commercial market. The report includes data through 2015 for acute care hospitals and through 2014 for physician groups.
The report includes some significant, if not unsurprising findings.
Since 2012, more than 50 percent of commercial insurance payments to acute care hospitals flowed to hospitals that have the highest prices, such as academic medical centers. Also, 86 percent of payments to physician groups for patients with commercial plans went to groups with above-average relative prices, according to the CHIA report. In all, $5.5 billion was paid to physician groups in 2014 for services provided to patients with commercial insurance plans.
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