Developed by the Indiana Hospital Association, careINsight, available at ?mycareINsight.org, uses data to help Hoosiers seek ?medical treatments.
The website displays hospital charge data compiled from the Indiana State Department of Health and the 100 most common Indiana inpatient services.
People can also search quality measures data such as patient satisfaction, mortalities, readmissions, early elective deliveries and ?infections.
“The confusion over health care pricing has gone on for too long while the release of huge amounts of medical data by the federal government has done little to help consumers,” Douglas Leonard, president of the Indiana Hospital Association, said. “Our goal with careINsight was to create an easy-to-use tool that could clear up some of the confusion by making price and quality data available to the public so Hoosiers can make a more fully-informed decision about their health care.”
The website will not contain hospital data from private insurance companies, which negotiate payment rates with hospitals and garner discounts for higher ?volumes.
“Years of government payment shortfalls and commercial insurance negotiations for hospital services have hampered our efforts to tell patients what each procedure costs and why,” Martin Padgett, president of the IHA Board of Directors, said.
Although not many Hoosiers have heard of this website, some of them said they would like to try it the next time they need to choose a hospital.
“Sometimes I felt confused why I was faced with different price tags for the same procedure. Perhaps I will use this website to compare prices,” Ginger King, a retired woman in Indiana, said.
According to IHA, the reason for the difference depends on a number of factors, such as facility, staffing, equipment costs and range of services offered. Individual factors, such as age and health conditions, can also affect prices.
The careINsight tool includes a search engine to look up charges by location, hospital and procedure. Results will show a hospital-to-hospital comparison by quality and links to hospital websites, as well as provide tips, education and links to financial aid information.
While the launch of IHA’s new online pricing tool is the first of its kind in Indiana available for public use, Leonard said it’s not a perfect solution.
“No one group in Indiana is better suited to do this than the hospitals themselves and the thousands of health care professionals who are providing the critical care to help improve the lives of all Hoosiers each and every day,” Leonard said in an email.
