Dive Brief:
- A new study in Health Affairs concludes that famous-name, expensive hospitals don't necessarily offer better care than other facilities.
- To examine the issue, researchers looked at almost 25,000 insurance claims from current and retired autoworkers in 10 U.S. metropolitan areas. They then divided the 110 hospitals the workers visited into three groups of hospitals: low price, medium price and high price hospitals.
- The analysis concluded that low-priced hospitals actually did better in some areas, including 30 day readmissions and preventing blood clots or death among surgical patients. Also, high-priced hospitals did no better than their lower-priced peers in preventing deaths in pneumonia and heart attack patients.
Dive Insight:
It's not surprising to learn that famed hospitals don't necessarily provide better care than their lower-priced competitors and peers. As we know, healthcare is such that you don't necessarily "get what you pay for." The key is to figure out what lower-priced hospitals are doing that allows them to deliver quality service at comparatively modest rates.