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THE NATIONAL HEALTHCARE TRANSPARENCY SUMMIT
The past year has seen an explosion of interest in making health care more transparent, with far more information than ever before on the costs and quality of health care. The federal government has released information on physicians' charges under Medicare and physicians' payments from pharmaceutical, biologics and medical device companies. Dozens of new businesses are exposing huge price and quality variations and helping people shop for affordable health care.
Consumers increasingly must make decisions about buying health care or coverage based on whatever information is available about costs and quality, including from health insurance exchanges and other sources. And employers and insurers alike are instituting arrangements designed to encourage consumers to access high quality, lower cost providers.
The trend toward greater transparency holds great potential to help make the health care market more efficient; improve the value that Americans receive from care; and make the entire health care system more financially sustainable over the long run. Yet it isn t without controversy; for example, narrow networks of providers in insurance policies may not always take quality into account, and both the federal government and states are considering new network adequacy standards to afford better protection for consumers.
This national summit, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, will focus on what everyone who has a stake in health care needs to know about this growing transparency movement, as follows:
- Who is innovating in making information about health care price and quality more transparent, and how?
- What are best practices among hospitals, health plans, governments and businesses in making cost and quality more transparent?
- How are health plans and employers structuring benefits packages to encourage use of high quality, low cost providers by plan members and employees?
- What are the latest efforts by federal and state governments and health insurance exchanges to make health care prices and quality more transparent?
- Are consumers' privacy and the movement for transparency on a collision course?
WHO SHOULD ATTEND:
- Hospital and health system leaders seeking to understand the trend toward greater transparency and how it will affect their organizations
- Doctors, nurses and other clinical professionals
- Health plans and other care purchasers who want to understand best practices in making price and quality information transparent to consumers
- Patients, consumers and advocates who want to understand the implications of narrow networks and the relationship between transparency and privacy
- Federal, state and local government officials
- Academics and health services researchers seeking more insight into transparency trends
- Entrepreneurs interested in knowing more about the market for transparency tools
LEARNING OBJECTIVES:
- Establish the policy objectives of increased health care transparency
- Identify barriers to transparency and how to overcome them
- Understand potential conflicts between transparency and privacy
- Understand the Open Payments program and information on payments to physicians by pharmaceutical, biologics and medical device manufacturers
- Assess private sector providers of transparent information
- Understand the role of health insurance exchanges in fostering transparency on health plan cost and quality
- Understand best practices among physicians, hospitals, health plans and employers in health care transparency
- Discuss the future of health care transparency
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