What Happened to Care Pricing and Provider Quality Transparency?

I’m on the Utah HIMSS board and we’re hosting an event called “Full Disclosure- Price Transparency & Provider Ratings in Healthcare.”

At the event on August 29, 2018, we’ll be talking about pricing transparency and physician outcomes. The Pricing Transparency question has multiple goals and remains a complex problem in healthcare IT and other areas. Leaders in Utah Health IT will come together to discuss resources and experiences from Utah.

Pricing in healthcare remains the number one concern for many different stakeholders. Informatics departments are still concerned with denials and claims administration. Patients are unsure of price of care. Physicians’ practices are not clearly aligned with billing codes and claims can account for up to 30% of healthcare spending waste. In April of this year, Seema Verma announced that requirements for hospitals to post standard pricing would be the start of a broad initiative to increase transparency about healthcare prices.

Can price transparency & provider ratings help manage the costs of healthcare?

Price transparency might have the single biggest effect in informing the public about healthcare costs and could support a more efficient health care delivery system in the United States. Utah HIMSS members and others are invited to submit questions for panelists.  

Please register for the event and follow the Utah HIMSS pages Linkedin and Twitter.

Here’s a look at the panel members that will be involved:

Moderator: Holly Rimmasch- Health Catalyst

Holly Rimmasch is an Executive VP/Chief Clinical Officer of Health Catalyst.  She currently leads population health, patient safety and improvement services.  Ms. Rimmasch has over 30 years of experience in clinical and operational healthcare management. She has spent the last 20 years dedicated to improving clinical care and better understanding how to sustain and achieve better value.

Holly has extensive healthcare and operational experience.  Prior to joining Health Catalyst, she was an Assistant VP at Intermountain Healthcare responsible for Clinical Services.  While at Intermountain, she also served as the system Clinical Operations Director for Cardiovascular and Intensive Medicine.  Holly co-founded and was a Principal in HMS, Inc, a healthcare consulting firm focusing on population health.

Ms. Rimmasch holds a Master of Science in Adult Physiology from the University of Utah and a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from Brigham Young University.

Price Transparency

A key question that Holly has focused on is “Are we making a difference in both quality and costs?”  “Does it translate into cost savings for those that are paying?” Part of her work involves bringing data sources together (clinical, financial, claims, etc.) to create transparency to services and care being provided and at what cost.  Over the last 6 years, Holly has been involved in developing a more accurate activity-based costing system. Accurate costing leads to more accurate pricing and more accurate pricing leads improved price transparency.

Panelist: Rep. Norm Thurston- Utah State Legislature

Personal & Professional

Dr. Thurston has a Masters and Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University, and an undergraduate degree in Spanish and Agribusiness Management from Brigham Young University.  His areas of specialty include insurance markets, health care provider markets, labor markets, and public finance/economics. 

Dr. Thurston has been a policy analyst and health economist for the Utah Department of Health since 2003. Currently, he is the Director of the Office of Health Care Statistics which is responsible for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of data related to health care cost and quality for the State of Utah.  In previous roles he has served as policy adviser and executive staff for health system reform efforts in the State of Utah. 

Before joining the state, Dr. Thurston worked for eight years as an assistant professor of economics at Brigham Young University.  He has published several articles on health care markets in nationally recognized economics journals.  He is a life-long resident of Utah, growing up in Morgan County.  He has native-level fluency in Spanish and was a Fulbright Scholar teaching economics in Argentina in 2001. He and his wife Maria have three children and two grandchildren.

Legislative

Rep. Thurston was elected to the Utah House of Representatives in 2014 from District 64 (Provo, Springville).  Currently, he is a member of the Government Operations Committee, the Economic Development and Workforce Services Committee, and the Social Services Appropriations Subcommittee.

Price Transparency:

“Norm Thurston is the director of the Office of Health Care Statistics (OHCS). The office collects, analyzes and disseminates data on health care utilization and costs for the State of Utah. Their two main data efforts include collecting information about patient encounters at hospitals and emergency rooms into the Healthcare Facilities Database and information about claims paid by health plans for all types of services into the All Payer Claims Database.

These data are used by a variety of entities, including healthcare facilities, plans, researchers, and public health programs.”

Panelist: Bob White- Intermountain Healthcare

Bob White, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer

Bob has over 27 years of experience in the Information Technology industry. He has been with SelectHealth for 20 years and currently leads member services, business systems support, program management, process improvement, business continuity, and information technology.

Previously, Bob was employed by the IBM Consulting Group. He attended Brigham Young University and holds a bachelor’s degree from DeVry University. He currently serves on the board of Trizetto Customer Group

Panelist: Katie Harwood- University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics

Patient and Financial Services Manager at the University of Utah Hospitals and Clinics

Katie Harwood is a Revenue Cycle Manager with University of Utah Health. She has been with the organization since 1995, most recently responsible for the admissions and financial counseling  teams. She is currently serving as the president of the American Association of Healthcare Administrative Management Utah Mountainwest chapter (AAHAM). She also participates with the National Association of Healthcare Access Management on the Certification Commission and is  a Certified Healthcare Access Manager. Outside of work she enjoys her two sons, dog, and Zumba.

Katie had the opportunity to participate in the development of the pricing transparency tool University of Utah Health. The goal was to create a tool that would have full care pricing available for consumers. She is excited to share what our experience in pricing transparency has been and how the consumer benefits from the use of it .

About the author

Janae Sharp

Healthcare as a Human Right. Physician Suicide Loss Survivor.
Janae writes about Artificial Intelligence, Virtual Reality, Data Analytics, Engagement and Investing in Healthcare. Founder of the Sharp Index.
twitter: @coherencemed

   

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