A little over a year ago I shared a post on healthcare pricing: Pick A Price, Any Price. I wrote about the challenges, difficulties and consequences associated with the frustrating disconnect between hospital charges and the actual costs of proving care in those hospitals. At the time I also referenced the work of Michael Porter and Robert Kaplan that was published in the Harvard Business Review article, How to Solve the Cost Crisis in Healthcare.

I am excited to share with you research inspired by that article that was recently completed at the University of Utah, spearheaded by Dr. Vivian Lee, the senior vice president for health sciences and Dean of the University of Utah School of Medicine. Highlights of the research were published in the article, Hospitals Are In the Hot Seat, on the University of Health Sciences’ Algorithms for Innovation web site.

In a nutshell, colleagues representing several industry disciplines worked together to explore how harnessing Big Data and applied research might help empower patients and healthcare providers with more timely, more reliable – and most importantly, most understandable cost information and how costs compare to care received and outcomes achieved.

We’re all familiar with Peter Drucker’s challenge that, “if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Though less famous but probably more meaningful – or at least pragmatic – was Drucker’s quote that, “what’s measured improves.” Historically for healthcare trying to measure, apportion and determine meaningful costs at a granular enough level where that information has timely and impactful use has been elusive.

Here’s hoping this work is another step in the right direction.

Cheers,
  Sparky