In Brief: Healthgrades Names Distinguished Hospitals; High-Deductible Plans Don\'t Encourage Shopping

Sixty California Hospitals Named Healthgrades Distinguished Facilities

Sixty facilities in California received the Healthgrades Distinguished Hospital For Clinical Excellence Award for 2016.

That number comprises more than 20% of the nationwide total, even though California represents little more than 10% of the U.S. population.

The hospitals were analyzed for outcomes regarding 19 different procedures and conditions. On average, their mortality rates were 26.5% lower than all hospitals nationwide. The hospitals were also to found to have improved their outcomes over the last three years for treating patients with sepsis, even though incidents of sepsis infection have been increasing. The condition has a roughly 50% mortality rate.

“Our findings are significant given the rise of sepsis, the associated high rates of mortality as well as the economic costs related to identifying and treating this life threatening condition,” said Evan Marks, Healthgrades' chief strategy officer. “Furthermore, our analysis showed that improvement in the treatment of sepsis observed at...recipient hospitals was significantly related to improved quality outcomes in treating other emergent hospital cohorts, such as heart failure, COPD, pneumonia, stroke and respiratory failure.”

Among the recipients are 21 hospitals operated by Oakland-based Kaiser Permanente, and three Los Angeles-area hospitals operated by Providence Health.

High-Deductible Health Plans Don’t Encourage Shopping For Services

A new study by researchers at the University of Southern California and Harvard has concluded that enrollees in high-deductible insurance plans are not terribly motivated to shop around for care in order to reduce their out-of-pocket costs.

The study of nearly 2,000 enrollees in high-deductible and non-high-deductible plans found little different among groups to shop for services or look for a less pricey health plan.

Although both groups believe there is little correlation to price and the quality of care received and that prices vary widely for the same services, only 10.9% of enrollees in high-deductible plans considered looking for a lower-cost alternative during their last visit to a doctor, versus 10% among those enrolled in non-high-deductible plans.

“Simply increasing a deductible, which gives enrollees skin in the game, appears insufficient to facilitate price shopping,” the study’s authors wrote. “Members of HDHP and traditional plans are equally likely to price shop for medical care, and they hold similar attitudes about healthcare prices and quality.”

The study’s authors concluded that lack of price transparency for healthcare services is among the obstacles discouraging health plan enrollees to shop around for services based on their own out-of-pocket costs.

“If encouraging price shopping is a viewed as an important policy goal, then there is a need for greater availability of price information and innovative approaches to enrollee engagement with this information,” the authors concluded.