Analysis of Hospital Quality Measures and Web-Based Chargemasters, 2019: Cross-sectional Study

BACKGROUND: The federal health care price transparency regulation from 2019 is aimed at bending the health care cost curve by increasing the availability of hospital pricing information for the public. OBJECTIVE: This study aims to examine the associations between publicly reported diagnosis-related group chargemaster prices on the internet and quality measures, process indicators, and patient-reported experience measures. METHODS: In this cross-sectional study, we collected and analyzed a random 5.02% (212/4221) stratified sample of US hospital prices in 2019 using descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis. RESULTS: We found extreme price variation in shoppable services and significantly greater price variation for medical versus surgical services (P=.006). In addition, we found that quality indicators were positively associated with standard charges, such as mortality (β=.929; P<.001) and readmissions (β=.514; P<.001). Other quality indicators, such as the effectiveness of care (β=−.919; P<.001), efficient use of medical imaging (β=−.458; P=.001), and patient recommendation scores (β=−.414; P<.001), were negatively associated with standard charges. CONCLUSIONS: We found that hospital chargemasters display wide variations in prices for medical services and procedures and match variations in quality measures. Further work is required to investigate 100% of US hospital prices posted publicly on the internet and their relationship with quality measures.