Regional Variations in Hospital Pricing Represent Potential Policy Target

The RAND Corporation recently published a report finding that, although hospitals’ commercial payer prices didn’t vary widely from Medicare prices, broad price variations existed between individual regions. These price differences, the report pointed out, are potential targets for healthcare pricing regulations. The largest changes were found in hospital referral regions (HHRs) that were already on the high and low extremes of the range.

According to Dave Muoio of Fierce Healthcare, “For instance, among HRRs that were already considered to have high commercial-to-Medicare ratios at the beginning of the study period (defined as HRRs in the top quartile in 2012), researchers reported a further 38 percentage point average growth among the group’s top quartile of growers and a matching 38 percentage point average decrease among the bottom quartile.”

Read more by clicking here.

(Source: Fierce Healthcare, April 4^th, 2022)