“Many Oregonians struggle to find affordable and good quality health care. HealthInsight’s Compare Your Care seeks to make it easier for consumers, providers and payers to have a view into the cost of care across our communities." – Associate Executive Director Meredith Roberts Tomasi
PORTLAND, Ore. (PRWEB) January 22, 2019
HealthInsight has released Oregon’s first public reporting of relative cost data for primary care practices statewide. The public now has free access to primary care practice cost rankings on the Compare Your Care website, which also reports quality of care rankings.
Cost and quality reporting helps consumers choose high value care that is effective and delivered at a reasonable cost. The reporting provided through Compare Your Care allows consumers to see which primary care practices provide high quality care and the relative (lower than average, average, or higher than average) cost of that care. The Compare Your Care comprehensive tool is useful for providers who give care, patients who receive care and those who pay for health care.
The cost of care is a combination of how much care is utilized and the price of that care. HealthInsight encourages consumers to speak up and ask questions of their providers; being engaged can help improve care outcomes and options. For example, consumers can ask their providers if a service is necessary, if the provider knows how much the service will cost or if there is a lower cost option.
“Many Oregonians struggle to find affordable and good quality health care. HealthInsight’s Compare Your Care seeks to make it easier for consumers, providers and payers to have a view into the cost of care across our communities. There are as many low cost and high quality practices across our state as there are high cost and low quality. Spending more money on health care does not equal better care or better outcomes,” said HealthInsight Oregon Associate Executive Director Meredith Roberts Tomasi.
Compare Your Care provides indexed cost and quality scores called the Total Cost Index and the Quality Composite Index. The Total Cost Index consists of the prices and use of tests and treatments for consumers covered by Moda Health, PacificSource Health Plans, Providence Health Plans, Regence BlueCross BlueShield of Oregon and Tuality Health Alliance. The Total Cost Index includes all the services a patient gets across settings (for example, hospitals or specialist’s offices) to show how primary care practices are managing costs associated with their patients.
Scores for the Quality Composite Index are calculated by measuring the quality of preventive care and chronic illness services provided by each primary care practice.
The data reported are from 2015 and 2016. HealthInsight will be updating the reports as more current data are available. Although these data are two years old, cost trends tend to remain stable over time so the scores are still useful indicators of practices’ performance.
HealthInsight’s work on cost reporting has been underway for five years, funded initially through a generous grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since 2015, primary care practices have received detailed information on their utilization and the cost of care they are providing, updated for each calendar year. Practices and other interested organizations have had the opportunity in the interim to learn about HealthInsight’s methodology and provide feedback and input into how cost data are analyzed and reported. Similar cost reporting has been made public in two other states.
Compare Your Care is one part of HealthInsight’s work on providing data and transparency on the cost and quality of health care in Oregon. HealthInsight makes detailed quality and cost data available to primary care practices through a HIPAA-compliant online portal. HealthInsight also partners with the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement (NRHI), a national nonprofit representing regional health improvement collaboratives (RHICs) and state partners working to achieve better health, and high-quality affordable care. HealthInsight contributes data about the cost of care in Oregon and Utah for national benchmarking, allowing for comparisons of the total cost of care in different regions around the country.
About HealthInsight
HealthInsight is a regional health improvement collaborative that oversees affiliated 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporations in Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Utah, and End Stage Renal Disease Networks across the western United States. HealthInsight holds contracts and grants in key areas of health care improvement, including leading quality improvement activities for the Medicare program as the Quality Innovation Network-Quality Improvement Organization (QIN-QIO) for the four-state region. HealthInsight has experience assisting front-line providers and engaging health care stakeholders to improve health care and outcomes. Its programs focus on transparency and public reporting; effective use of health information technology; engaging consumers and communities to improve their health; and redesigning how care is paid for and delivered.
In May 2017, HealthInsight and Q Corp approved a merger of the two organizations and their operations in Oregon. Key initiatives include a voluntary all-payer data collaborative and the Total Cost of Care program.
In April 2018, HealthInsight and Qualis Health announced a formal merger, combining the two organizations and their operations across the U.S. Both Qualis Health and HealthInsight have been engaged in health care quality consulting and providing quality improvement services for more than 40 years.
About Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
For more than 45 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are working alongside others to build a national Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. For more information, visit http://www.rwjf.org. Follow the Foundation on Twitter at http://www.rwjf.org/twitter or on Facebook at http://www.rwjf.org/facebook.