Healthcare Transparency: More Good News

It's not just commercial insurers and providers who've jumped enthusiastically onto the transparency bandwagon:

"The Bush administration [has launched] a $1.9 million advertising campaign touting its effort to rate hospitals and urging patients to check a government website before choosing one. "

Notice that these measures include not just price, but some two and a half dozen metrics. According to the Department of Health and Human Services:

"CMS [Center for Medicare & Medicaid Services] is adding information about the number of certain elective hospital procedures provided to those patients and what Medicare pays for those services. For the first time, consumers have the three critical elements -- quality information, patient satisfaction survey information, and pricing information for specific procedures -- they need to make effective decisions about the quality and value of the health care available to them through local hospitals."

Cool beans!

The site itself is pretty basic and easily navigable. It looks and works much like an insurer's "Find A Provider" page: you can choose to look by a procedure or condition, or by hospitals in your area. Kudos to the CMS folks!