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The major health carriers have developed a kind of efficiency rating for doctors and hospitals. These rating systems are directly communicating with the consumer. The rating systems show price of a procedure and quality of care. So if an insured wants to look up how many times a doctor has performed a certain procedure they can. They can also view the complication rate from that doctor or facility on that particular procedure.
The American Medical Association is stating that the Rating Measures are wrong up to 25% of the time. This is a very high % if they are correct. The Wall Street Journal confirmed that one of the studies that reported this high % was funded by the AMA.
What we are seeing from the top health insurance carriers is they are developing health plans that want you to use the top rated doctors and facilities. These plans will have less cost to the insured if they use the preferred doctors.
So now it seems that the health care providers are not happy that the insured can now look up the cost of the procedure and the quality of care that doctor provides. All of these types of plans were developed pre health care reform so it will be interesting to see if this type of health care information will continue to be available to the consumer. Recently the HHS launched a site that also gives a quality of care. So at this point there is not just the carriers programs available but now a free service to shop health care.
