Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Harvard Business School, Soldiers Field, Boston, MA, USA.
Inquiry. 2024 Jan-Dec;61:469580241255823. doi: 10.1177/00469580241255823.
Health care price transparency is gaining momentum as a tangible policy intervention that can unleash market principles to increase competition, help begin to decrease U.S. health care expenditures, and provide Americans with access to affordable, high-quality health care. Indeed, pricing reform is required to facilitate patient shopping in health care. In this narrative policy review, we offer a brief history of health care price transparency efforts and an overview of the health care price transparency literature. Further, we highlight the current rules and legislative initiatives aimed at achieving the full potential of health care price transparency. Lastly, we offer key takeaways and highlight suggestions for future policy directions, including the need to ensure hospital and insurance compliance through more appropriate penalties and incentives, importance of reducing regulation to promote financial upside that can be obtained by both patients and providers who actively promote shopping for lower cost, higher quality health care goods and services, and the need for transparent and easily found quality metrics, including outcomes most important to patients, driven by physicians "on the ground" with patient input.
医疗保健价格透明度作为一种切实可行的政策干预措施正在兴起，它可以释放市场原则，增加竞争，有助于开始降低美国的医疗保健支出，并为美国人提供负担得起的高质量医疗保健。事实上，需要进行定价改革，以方便患者在医疗保健方面购物。在本次叙述性政策审查中，我们简要介绍了医疗保健价格透明度方面的努力，并概述了医疗保健价格透明度方面的文献。此外，我们还重点介绍了旨在充分发挥医疗保健价格透明度潜力的当前规则和立法举措。最后，我们提供了一些重要的收获，并强调了未来政策方向的建议，包括需要通过更适当的处罚和激励措施确保医院和保险公司的合规性，减轻监管的重要性，以促进患者和提供者积极推动购买成本更低、质量更高的医疗保健商品和服务所获得的经济利益，以及需要透明和易于查找的质量指标，包括由“实地”医生根据患者的意见提出的对患者最重要的结果。
