Launches to Allow New Mexicans to Shop for the Most Affordable, Highest Quality Care

This month, a new website is launching to give New Mexicans the information they need to shop around for the most affordable, highest quality health care. The website, which can be found at: apcd.doh.nm.gov allows New Mexicans to compare average prices and quality metrics for common, non-emergency procedures at each of the state's 44 hospitals.

The new health care transparency website is the culmination of legislation enacted in 2015 (Senate Judiciary Committee Substitute for Senate Bills 323 and 474). The legislation was based on recommendations from Think New Mexico's 2014 policy report, Making Health Care More Affordable. The legislation, which passed both the House (52-0) and Senate (26-0) unanimously, reflected a bipartisan compromise that brought together Senate Bill 323, sponsored by Senator Mark Moores, and Senate Bill 474, sponsored by Senators Jerry Ortiz y Pino and Sander Rue. The final bill was supported by the New Mexico Department of Health, the New Mexico Hospital Association, Think New Mexico, the AARP, the Foundation for Open Government, the League of Women Voters, the Con Alma Health Foundation, the national organization Costs of Care, and leading doctors across New Mexico, among others.

The user-friendly website allows New Mexicans to search by procedure, such as a colonoscopy, and see the average prices paid for that procedure at nearby health care providers. New Mexicans can also look up their local provider by name, and find a list of common procedures performed at that facility, along with their average prices.

Along with average prices, the website also includes quality ratings for all the health care facilities for which those ratings available. The quality ratings reflect both patient surveys about the care they received at that facility, as well as factors such as rates of excess readmissions and hospital-acquired infections.

"This user-friendly health care transparency website gives New Mexicans a powerful tool to find the highest quality, most affordable health care for their families, which is more urgent than ever during this period of rapidly rising prices," said Kristina Fisher, Associate Director of Think New Mexico.

Fisher serves on the Advisory Committee that has assisted the Department of Health with the implementation of the website. Creating the website was a multi-year effort because in order to gather the necessary data, the state had to first build an All Payer Claims Database (APCD), which collects information about the actual prices paid for medical procedures. Think New Mexico advocated for the development of the state's APCD, and its implementation this year makes New Mexico the 24th state with an APCD, including our neighbors in Colorado, Utah, and Texas. (Another seven states are currently establishing them.)

In its 2014 report, Think New Mexico noted that at least nineteen other states, including Colorado, Arizona, and Utah, have already created health care transparency websites. Research by the University of Chicago found that states with transparency websites saw the price of common, elective medical procedures drop by an average of 7% as a result of price competition. For example, hip transplants averaged $2,800 less in states with price disclosure websites than in states without them.

Similarly, states that publicly post health care quality data, like rates of hospital-acquired infections and readmissions, have seen hospitals compete to improve quality. For example, after Pennsylvania began publishing rates of hospital-acquired infections in 2006, the statewide infection rate fell by 7.8%, saving many lives as well as millions of dollars, because the cost of hospitalization when an infection occurs is more than six times as high, on average, as the cost of hospitalization without an infection.

More information about Think New Mexico's research and advocacy on health care transparency can be found at: http://www.thinknewmexico.org/health-care-affordability and the transparency website itself is available at: https://apcd.doh.nm.gov/