Transparency Advisory
Group
(formerly Reporting Task Force)
Short-term SMART Goal
• The TAG’s charter guides our work. What should the focus for 2014 be?
“ADVISE” • Who should we be advising?
1. The Aim 3 team:
• Tasked with developing consumer-facing tools
2. Utah Health Data Committee:
• Required to provide “Comparison Reports”
• Identifying high-priority data uses (Best Use Committee)
3. Office of Health Care Statistics:
• Ensuring data completeness and quality • Providing access to data users
• Each entity has internal goals that the TAG can support
Which categories of measures do you think would be valuable to consumers?
What features did you like?
• Layout • Easy navigation • Definitions • Terms of use • Mapping capabilities • Twitter feed • Longitudinal data • Risk adjustment • Quality outcomes • Printable• Compare facility types • Compare multiple years • Patient-friendly display • Everyday language
• Thorough
• “Are you uninsured?” button
• Prominently displayed prices
What features did you dislike?
• County level data • Showing DRGs
• Hover features not clear • Missing data
• Challenging navigation • Challenging
interpretation
• Unpleasant looking
• Too many acronyms or jargon
• Complicated
• Limited data categories • Not consumer-oriented,
designed for regulatory compliance
• Lack of quality about quality impedes value assessment
Other insights?
• Obtain user feedback about what measures they would like to see
• Need to clearly define “cost” and “price” • Who is our audience?
• What has been the impact of these public reports?
Other Criteria
Type I Options – Basis of Comparison
1. Health Care System (Intermountain, MountainStar, University, etc.)
2. Facilities (Individual hospitals or surgical centers) 3. Geographic area (ZIP code, Small Area, County) 4. Payer Types (HMO, PPO, Self-funded, etc.)
5. Specific Payers (Health Plans, PBMs)
6. Pharmacy type (Chain retail, big-box, independent, mail-order)
Other Criteria
Type II Options – Unit of Observation
1. Preventive Services (Colonoscopy, Mammography, Well-child exam, immunizations, etc.)
2. Most common diagnosis (Diabetes, Asthma, Cancer, etc.)
3. Most common procedures (Delivery, THR, etc.) 4. Most common prescriptions and maybe by drug
Other Criteria
Type III Options – Unit of Measurement
1. Average total cost (payer paid + patient responsibility)
2. Average bundled cost of care (professional cost + facility cost)
3. Average patient out of pocket
4. Average patient paid vs. insurer paid 5. Average discount – charged vs. paid 6. Brand name vs. generic
Objectives
1. Assess consumer use of online health
information
– How do consumers find information? – What sources do they currently use?
– What barriers are there to understanding and using quality and pricing information?
Objectives
2. Identify the healthcare pricing information
that will be most valuable to Utah consumers
– What are consumer needs in this area?
– What conditions or procedures? i.e. maternity, orthopedic, imaging
– At what level should information be displayed? i.e. health plan, provider (hospital or clinic), facility type
– Who is the target audience? Commercially insured or uninsured?
– What level of aggregation/summary allows the
Objectives
3. Model the display of healthcare information
to best facilitate accuracy and clarity
– How much explanatory verbiage is necessary? How can this be best conveyed?
– What colors and symbols convey the information clearly?
– What designs are appealing to consumers, such that they remain on the site?
Focus Group Questions
1. Have you ever looked for health information online? What kind of information have you looked for? How did you find it?
2. Have you looked at information about healthcare quality? Was this information based on user
comments or something else? What sites have you looked at?
3. Have you looked at information about healthcare prices? What sites have you looked at? What did you like or not like about the information you found? What did you like or not like about how that
Focus Group Questions
4. Would it be useful to have information about healthcare prices? How might you use that information?
5. If you were to look for information about healthcare prices online, for yourself or someone else, what
kinds of procedures or services would it be useful to have information about?
6. Based on this sample list, for which procedures would it be useful to have pricing information? 7. What other types of information would be useful
relative to healthcare prices? What have you
discovered in the past that you wish you had known before about pricing?
Focus Group Questions
8. Looking at this sample display, is it easy to
understand? What do you like about it? What do you dislike about it?
9. Have you ever discussed healthcare pricing with a doctor or pharmacist? Why or why not? Would you feel comfortable doing so?
10. Has a doctor or pharmacist ever brought up the topic of pricing with you? Did he or she provide any
information to you? If so, what form was it in? Did you use it? Why or why not?
