The Indiana Hospital Association (IHA) last Friday announced a new update to mycareINsight.org, a tool it created in 2015 to make health care price and quality information publicly available to consumers. The updated site now includes a single location in which Hoosiers can find hospital-specific price information for common shoppable services, out-of-pocket price estimator tools where available, and standard charges for all items and services in a machine-readable format, as required by the federal Price Transparency Rule.
“Our hospitals are working individually and collectively to continuously improve mycareINsight so every patient has the information they need to make informed decisions about their care,” said IHA President Brian Tabor.
Since 2015, mycareINsight has allowed consumers to compare hospital charges and quality ratings for the 100 most frequent inpatient services and the 50 most frequent outpatient procedures, helping to clarify the complex factors that affect the cost of hospital services.
Although Indiana hospitals have complied with the federal Price Transparency Rule, there was no single location to quickly find links to each hospital’s information until now.
“I’m proud of our member hospitals’ commitment to transparency and their compliance with new federal regulations despite the ongoing challenges of the pandemic,” said Tabor. “Today’s announcement makes this information even more accessible to Hoosier consumers.”
While IHA has enhanced the mycareINsight tool to include direct links to hospital-specific price information for all Indiana hospitals, the overall function of the website remains the same. The website was developed using public data that is reported to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Indiana Department of Health and includes important measures of care provided in the hospital, including patient satisfaction, readmissions, infections, deaths, birthing outcomes, hospital charges, and more.
“While the data on mycareINsight provides a great starting point for consumers to begin comparing hospitals and making health care decisions, it only tells part of the story and we cannot provide what a patient’s out-of-pocket cost will be based on their insurance,” said Tabor. “To make health care prices truly transparent, pending federal transparency requirements for health insurance companies should be accelerated and put into state law.”
To access the updated site, consumers can visit mycareINsight.org.