On June 1 the CMS posted a massive data set of Medicare charges and payments for inpatient procedures in 2013. Modern Healthcare created a searchable database that shows what more than 3,000 hospitals billed Medicare for the 100 most frequently billed diagnoses in 2013 and what the government actually paid. Users can see how many patients were treated for each condition and the average charge that individual hospitals billed for those treatments. Also included are the highest and lowest average charges nationwide for the the same treatment.
In addition, the database shows the average payments Medicare made for each discharge, usually far less than what was billed. Also shown are the highest and lowest payments Medicare made nationwide for the same treatment. The tool also provides a calculation of the average spread between the all of the highest and the lowest charges for each hospital's surrounding referral region. Some areas showed wide disparities in charges within the same Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs).
Because the CMS file only contains Medicare patient charge data and only from the top 100 DRGs, the data does not represent all the procedures performed by a hospital. Also, to protect privacy, records derived from 10 or fewer discharges for a particular DRG were excluded.
Art Golab analyzes data and works with Modern Healthcare reporters to produce high impact stories across a range of healthcare beats. He also develops interactive online healthcare databases to provide insight to readers. A former data journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times, Golab earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Columbia College in Chicago and an MS degree in information systems from DePaul University.
In addition, the database shows the average payments Medicare made for each discharge, usually far less than what was billed. Also shown are the highest and lowest payments Medicare made nationwide for the same treatment. The tool also provides a calculation of the average spread between the all of the highest and the lowest charges for each hospital's surrounding referral region. Some areas showed wide disparities in charges within the same Diagnosis Related Groups (DRGs).
Because the CMS file only contains Medicare patient charge data and only from the top 100 DRGs, the data does not represent all the procedures performed by a hospital. Also, to protect privacy, records derived from 10 or fewer discharges for a particular DRG were excluded.
Art Golab analyzes data and works with Modern Healthcare reporters to produce high impact stories across a range of healthcare beats. He also develops interactive online healthcare databases to provide insight to readers. A former data journalist at the Chicago Sun-Times, Golab earned a bachelor's degree in journalism from Columbia College in Chicago and an MS degree in information systems from DePaul University.
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