A survey of physicians reveals that they back a move toward greater transparency in healthcare, specifically pricing and payment data being made public.
The American College of Physician Executives (ACPE) surveyed 630 physicians and 54 percent of respondents said that increasing transparency will improve the physician-patient relationship. Comparatively, only 22 percent think it will damage the physician-patient relationship and 24 percent say it won’t have an impact.
“The health care industry is bleeding the country dry,” Bruce Bender, M.D., a physician respondent wrote to ACPE. “If costs are to be reduced by a third, we need to know where the real corruption and waste lie, and physicians need to be at the forefront of fixing it. The more we resist the more we are part of the problem.”
Those against the transparency were worried that the pricing data would be hard to decipher without context.
Transparency in healthcare has gained a significant amount of momentum in the last few years. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released Medicare hospital charge data by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) in the past two years. Other healthcare organizations have similarly have made pricing transparency a priority.
