The following is the third in a series of briefs on rising healthcare costs published by the Rhode Island Business Group on Health. Read our first brief on "RI's Ongoing Struggle with Rising Healthcare Costs" here. Read our second brief on "Hospital's Rising Overhead Costs Erode Efficiency" here.
Rhode Island's hospitals are like much of the hospital industry nationwide in that almost all have a stunning lack of transparency regarding their prices, sources of income and spending. Such opacity hinders any comprehensive assessment of whether hospitals in the United States—including those in Rhode Island—are becoming more or less efficient.
The issue of hospital efficiency is critically important in Rhode Island because hospitals are the largest expense included in medical claims that commercial health insurers pay on behalf of employers, unions, families, individuals, cities and towns and the state government itself. Therefore, assessing the overall financial performance of hospitals is necessary to understand the effect hospitals have on commercial health insurance premiums in Rhode Island. After all, the efficient use of resources is essential for making health insurance more affordable, and affordability is a key component of the value hospitals deliver.
Read full brief here (pdf).
Read letter to Hospital Association of Rhode Island (HARI)'s Howard Dulude from RIBGH regarding proposal to increase Affordability Standard’s maximum hospital payment.