MEDIA RELEASE

As part of the Obama administration’s work to make the health care system more affordable and accountable, data are being released that show significant variation across the country and within communities in what hospitals charge for common inpatient services.

The report was posted on the federal government website managed by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

The data include hospital-specific charges for the more than 3,000 U.S. hospitals that receive Medicare Inpatient Prospective Payment System (IPPS) payments for the top 100 most frequently billed discharges, paid under Medicare based on a rate per discharge using the Medicare Severity Diagnosis Related Group (MS-DRG) for Fiscal Year (FY) 2011.

These DRGs represent almost 7 million discharges or 60 percent of total Medicare IPPS discharges.

Hospitals determine what they will charge for items and services provided to patients and these charges are the amount the hospital bills for an item or service.

The Total Payment amount includes the MS-DRG amount, bill total per diem, beneficiary primary payer claim payment amount, beneficiary Part A coinsurance amount, beneficiary deductible amount, beneficiary blood deducible amount and DRG outlier amount.

For these DRGs, average charges and average Medicare payments are calculated at the individual hospital level.

Users will be able to make comparisons between the amount charged by individual hospitals within local markets, and nationwide, for services that might be furnished in connection with a particular inpatient stay.

(Editor’s Note: While the database is a little confusing, users are able to filter by state. Entering ‘Honolulu’ in the search box pulls up data from numerous facilities across the state, including several on the Big Island.)

For the complete data, visit: https://data.cms.gov/Medicare/Inpatient-Prospective-Payment-System-IPPS-Provider/97k6-zzx3

— Find out more:
www.cms.gov