Consumer Driven Health Care

"Transparency in Healthcare" is the latest buz words in the healthcare industry. But, we at Marble Falls Falls Minor Emergency believe these are more than just buz words. We beleive that the concepts that they represent are instrumental to the economic and ethical well being of the health care marketplace.

What are the concepts that "Transparency in Health Care"represent? Essentially, "Health Care Transparency" is making increased information available to health care consummers regarding the cost and quality of healthcare. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services " Health care transparency provides consumers with the information necessary, and the incentive, to choose health care providers based on value." In other words, transparency in health care will enable consumers to compare the quality and price of health care services, allowing them to make informed choices among doctors and hospitals.

Technically making more information available to consumers regarding health care cost is relativly easy. It could be as simple as hospitals and physicians posting their prices for particular services on the internet. The tough part is making judgements on the "quality" of health care services. Everyone with a stake in healthcare has a radically different tool for measuring the quality of healthcare. Predictably, insurers primarily focus on cost as their primary determinant of quality. The less a providers cost the insurance company for particular type of patient encounter, the higher is quality of the service in their view. Providers tend to focus on outcomes as the best measure of quality. The best models combine measures of outcomes with cost, but these are expensive models to utilize and have met with great resistance from insurance companies. Until there is greater aggrement on how to measure quality in health care, this will continue to be considerable contention regarding "quality" in health care.

Responding to this national initiative, the Texas Legislature passed Senate Bill 1731. This bill requires providers to maintain written policies on discounts given to uninsured and indigent patients. It also requires practices to post notice that these written policies are avaiable to the public to review.

Marble Falls Minor Emergency Center has and will continue to make its discount and billing policies available on this web site for the public to review. However going another step to advance the national initiative of "Transparency in Health Care", Marble Falls Minor Emergency Center will be posting the actual charges for billed services on this website.

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Health care consummers can now take a more active role in keeping health care down. Doing your homework and asking questions can pay off. It's time we all took charge of our own healthcare and helped reduce healthcare cost.