Transparency in healthcare has become one of the most actively discussed topics to date. The major questions have been:
- What should healthcare transparency look like?
- Why does healthcare transparency matter now?
- Why is it important to the consumer?
New Choice Health will begin to answer these questions in a three part article, starting with Question One.
What is Healthcare Transparency?
New Choice Health has found that there are five critical components of healthcare transparency.
- Price transparency that empowers patients and other care purchasers to make meaningful price comparisons prior to receiving care.
- Price transparency should ultimately provide patients with the information they need to understand the total price of their care and what is included in that price.
- This price transparency should be easy to use, easy to understand and easy to communicate to others in the decision making process.
- Price transparency information should be paired with other information that defines the value of services for the care purchaser. This will vary depending upon the type of care, type of healthcare professionals and the intensity of care involved.
- Other important components in determining value of care is the quality of the care, the quality of the outcome, the patients perception of the quality of service and the process overall,
A recent study conducted by the HFMA Price Transparency Task Force reinforces these principles.
At New Choice Health, our mission is to provide this information in an easy to understand comparative format, focusing both on quantitative information (i.e. price, accepted quality measures) and on other aspects that are better shared as consumer feedback and will be more useful in an active exchange of information related to unique and specific patient situations.
Read Part 2: Healthcare Transparency Part 2: Why It Matters Now
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