Maryland Hospital Pricing Guide
Frequency: Biennially
Measure Type: Cost
The Maryland Health Care Commission provides accessible information to the public on the cost and quality of health care. They look at hospitals, health insurances, assisted living, long-term care, nursing homes, prescription drugs, and HMO’s (health plans). Data is mainly received from the Health Services Cost Review Commission (HSCRC), the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DHMH), along with other various resources such as the Department on Aging (used for the nursing home guide).
Hospital Guide
There are 18 measures used for testing the quality of care of these hospitals. They illustrate data on heart attacks (AMI), heart failure (CHF), pneumonia, and surgical care improvement (on hip, knee, and colon surgeries). It consists of raw data displaying process measures that are updated biennially.
The Maryland Health Care Commission also allows consumers to view all the acute care hospitals in Maryland. Information on the number of cases, the average charge per case, and the average charge per day are listed. The charges listed do not include physician professional fees. Mortality rates are not used in the data collection from Maryland’s Hospital Guide. They are developing a computer program where it would adjust the death rate of various patients admitted to a hospital.
