Public Disclosure of Hospital Safety and Quality Information Needed in California—We Need to Pass AB 2967

[courtesy of California Progress Report]

By Elizabeth (Betsy) Imholz
Director of Special Projects
Consumers Union

Strong measures are needed to slow ever escalating health care costs and improve medical outcomes. An important bill to be voted on in the Senate Health Committee June 25, AB 2967 (Lieber), serves both those ends. The bill ensures public disclosure of medical outcomes and other information about health care safety, quality and cost in California-- information that will improve the safety of care and allow consumers and employers to search out the best value for our health care dollars.

Potential cost savings to the state and the healthcare system from AB 2967 are enormous. Public disclosure of safety and quality information, such as mortality rates by hospital, has been shown to lead to improved performance. (See, e.g., “Hospital Performance Reports: Impact on Quality, Market-Share and Regulation”, Hibbard, J., Stockard, J., and Tusler, M., Health Affairs (July/August 2005)). Improving performance saves lives, while also saving money in the health care system for both public and private payers.

For example, according to the Governor’s Office hospital-acquired infections add an estimated $3 billion per year to cost of health care in California; medical errors add $1 billion per year. Pennsylvania has broken out the data by public vs. private payers. It found that while 9% of all hospital-acquired infections (HAIs) were to Medicaid patients, 18% of total infection costs, or nearly $372 million was attributed to the Medicaid population. (Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council Research Brief, “Reducing Hospital-acquired Infections: The Business Case,” Issue No. 8, Nov. 2005.) Since California’s Medicaid costs far exceed those of Pennsylvania, our Medicaid savings on HAIs alone would likely far exceed $372 million.

The bill’s “California Health Care Cost and Quality Transparency Committee,” with substantial representation by consumers and other purchasers of health care, as well as all other stakeholders, will develop a plan to ensure efficient collection of data. Under AB 2967, health care providers will have the information they need to evaluate their performance vis a vis their peers and to make improvements; consumers will have the information they need to make informed choices in the health care marketplace; and employers will be able to make value-based purchases of health coverage.