Hospitals still not ready for transparency

by Kent Bottles A year ago I wrote a Hospital Impact blog post titled "Is Your Hospital Ready for Radical Transparency?" Three recent articles would indicate that the answer in April 2013 is still a resounding no. Steven Brill recently wrote a highly critical Time Magazine cover story that bemoaned the lack of transparency of nonprofit hospitals. In his 24,105-word essay, Brill concentrates on how hospital bills are indecipherable to the average patient. By following the money trail, Brill dissects actual patients' hospital bills to examine the role of the hospital chargemaster (an internal price list for products and services) and how it is possible for a nonprofit hospital to markup acetaminophen 10,000 percent, charge $77.00 for a box of sterile gauze pads and $18.00 for a single diabetic test strip that costs 55 cents on Amazon. Uwe E. Reinhardt, an economics professor at Princeton, responded to the Brill article by criticizing not-for-profit hospitals for their lack of transparency and public accountability. Unlike for profit hospitals whose websites list annual reports to shareholders and mandatory U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission reports, nonprofit hospitals, according to Reinhardt, make it difficult for community members to view their Form 990 reports. The New Jersey Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources unsuccessfully recommended in 2007 that the general public should be able to see: Nonprofit hospital's articles of incorporation an...
Source: hospital impact - Category: Health Managers Authors: Source Type: blogs