It will take time to digest the huge loads of data like that from the RAND 4.0 Hospital Price Transparency Study comparing hospital prices paid by Medicare to prices paid by employers and private health insurers and make use of it, but patients and employers are going to demand better prices, so insurance companies are going to have to negotiate better prices.
In an interview with Bloomberg Law, Ashley Bacot, Vice Chair of the Florida Alliance for Healthcare Value Board of Directors, points out that initially an employer, combining data from RAND with data from the hospital value dashboard and the National Academy for State Health Policy Hospital Cost Tool, may be willing to pay more for providers that have lower hospital readmissions. However, over time those employers may learn that other employers in the same market are paying lower prices for the same services and changes will result.
To read the Bloomberg article, click here.
