Massachusetts's Center for Health Information and Analysis contracted a vendor to design and launch a website for patients featuring key information about various healthcare procedures, according to the Boston Globe.
Here are four takeaways:
1. The website will include information such as safety and quality measures for individual hospitals as well as information about getting insurance and care at different locations. The site will have medical procedures and tests' prices, such as pricing for MRIs, mammograms and colonoscopies.
2. The state hopes to launch the site by September.
3. The question remains whether residents will utilize the website. The state currently mandates payers to put cost information online. The Globe reports only a fraction of the state's residents with commercial health insurance browse these prices online.
4. In 2015, Massachusetts took down a website that featured prices for consumers as patients did not find it useful.
Center for Health Information and Analysis Executive Director Ray Campbell told the Globe, "It's a tough assignment. Transparency — a lot of people have taken a run at it. I'm not sure anybody has had a hugely satisfactory outcome. I'm actually excited. I think we have a lot of the pieces in place to have the best transparency website in the country."