Mass. website discloses hospital price and quality data

By Liz Kowalczyk, Globe Staff

Massachusetts residents can now search a new website to compare the cost and quality of care at different hospitals, part of an ambitious state plan to help control health care costs by giving consumers more information.

The new My HealthCare Options site gives consumers access to previously confidential information about how much insurers pay individual hospitals for surgical procedures such as knee and hip replacements, and for treating illnesses such as pneumonia. It also allows comparisons of patient satisfaction ratings and patient safety measures at different hospitals.

The website was required as part of the state's mandatory health insurance law. More than 442,000 people have enrolled in health insurance programs since 2006, and Massachusetts now has the smallest percentage of uninsured adults in the country, but the cost of the subsidized insurance is rising fast.

“Transparency is vitally important in both controlling costs and improving quality in the health care industry,” Secretary of Health and Human Services Dr. JudyAnn Bigby said today in a written statement. “While it remains to be seen how improved access to price and quality information will impact decision-making, our hope is that the website will empower consumers to spend health care dollars more efficiently and motivate providers to improve quality and decrease their costs."

Bigby is chairwoman of the Massachusetts Health Care Quality and Cost Council, which oversees the website. The council collected payment data from all private health insurers in Massachusetts.

The information made public today is similar to the data that the Boston Globe Spotlight Team used for its report last month about how a handful of hospitals are paid far more than other hospitals for doing the same work, even when there is no evidence that the higher-priced care produces healthier patients.

The Globe reported that Brigham and Women's Hospital, Massachusetts General Hospital, Children's Hospital Boston, and a few others are, on average, paid about 15 percent to 60 percent more than their rivals by insurance companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts and Harvard Pilgrim Health Care. The gap is even more striking for many individual procedures, which can be two or three times more expensive in one hospital than in another.

A growing number of consumers are being required to pay more of their health care costs, particularly those enrolled in high-deductible plans, making information on prices increasingly relevant.