Health Cost

Partners In Care has consistently focused it's efforts on understanding the true dynamics of the Central New Jersey health care "system." Our goal, as articulated by the Physician Leadership of the company is:

To Fundamentally change the manner in which healthcare is delivered and financed so that:

Physicians can afford to provide it;

Patients can afford to obtain it; and

Employers can afford to pay for it.

The table below provides links to various documents and resources that are useful as both background information:

Document	Description
Legislative Briefing Paper	A two page document that PIC authored in April of 2006 to help form the key issues for policy makers
Senator Grassley's March 5 Letter to the AHA	A challenge to the American Hospital Association from the chairman of the US Senate Finance Committee
The Hospital Association's Response to Grassley	The AHA's May 1st letter.
The Cost-Shift Payment 'Hydraulic'	An article reprint from the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of the journal Health Affairs describing the history and national trends of the over-payment by some customers for hospital services rendered to patients covered under other plans that do not cover the facilities "costs"
Accounting For Charity Care and Bad Debt	The official Financial Accounting Standards Board statement on the appropriate methodology for recording and reporting of services rendered to patients either unable or unwilling to pay
Top 20 Priorities for National Action	An Executive Summary of The Institute of Medicine's recommendations for the US Health Care priorities. Published in Jan '03, this document provides an excellent foundation for PIC's quality improvement efforts
Impact File for IPPS FY 2006 Final Rule	In this large zip file from the CMS site is a spreadsheet that has both the Cost/Charge Ratios and the Provider Numbers and Names
Impact File for IPPS FY 2007 Proposed Rule
MedPac Senate Inpt Presentation	This is a pdf of the slide presentation made by MedPac to the US Senate in April of 2003 detailing the trends seen in the cost of inpatient services for the Medicare population.
Medicare Press Release - June 1st, 2006	The new information posted by CMS at http://www.cms.hhs.gov/HealthCareConInit/01_Overview.asp shows the range of payments by county and the number of cases treated at each hospital for a variety of treatments provided to seniors and people with disabilities in fiscal year 2005. These include 30 common elective procedures including heart operations and implanting cardiac defibrillators, hip and knee replacements, kidney and urinary tract operations, gallbladder operations and back and neck operations, and for common non-surgical admissions.
Medicare Top 30 DRGs - County Level Pricing
Medicare Select 11 DRGs - County Level Pricing
Medicare Model Healthcare Decision Making Tool
MedPac - Est. 2007 Medicare Physician Fees	This is a PDF of the memo recently released by MedPac describing trends in the setting of Physician Compensation for Medicare.

In the upcoming months, Partners In Care will be working with more local health plan and self insured fund data from employers and unions and will continue to update this website with findings. We encourage everyone to become more astute, ask more questions, and understand more about how healthcare bills are calculated and how prices are set by providers and healthplans. The more we all begin to understand, the more we will be in a position to work with one another from an objective basis.

With the release on Thursday, June 1st, 2006 of the nationwide, county level, pricing information on 41 DRGs by CMS, Partners In Care is rebuilding its hospital price benchmarking analysis.

Please forgive our Web Page's Current Status, We are undergoing a significant facelift and content update and want to make sure the content is delivered to you accurately.