Transformation of the health care delivery system cannot occur without greater price transparency. Efforts to increase price transparency have multiplied in recent years, but much remains to be done. Hospital prices are particularly opaque, and vary significantly depending on who is paying the bill. Currently consumers don’t know what a hospital will charge them for a given procedure or how much of a price difference there exists at different hospitals.

In an effort to increase price transparency, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) have publicly released for the first time a data set showing what hospitals charged and what Medicare paid for the 100 most common Medicare inpatient stays (Diagnostic Related Groups or DRGs) in 2011. And on June 3, 2013 CMS also released an outpatient data set, containing charges and Medicare payments for 30 select Ambulatory Payment Classification Codes (APCs), by facility.The differences between hospital charges and Medicare payments are striking, as is the enormous variation in hospital charges across and within communities. 

We challenge you to visualize the hospital price data to create greater transparency in the healthcare field. Help the public, organizations and/or communities better understand, explore, and interpret the issues revealed in the data as well as the data’s relationships to other issues, such as hospital quality and patient satisfaction.

We’re excited to partner with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Health 2.0 on this challenge and are offering $30,000 in prizes! Check Health 2.0 for complete details and to learn about their Apps and Tools Challenge, which offers $90,000 in prizes.