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Source: St.儲存 Louis Post-DispatchSept. 28--Regardless of how you personally view the overall merits, regulatory strictures or societal costs of the Affordable Care Act, embedded in the new health care law are key elements that can help make you a more knowledgeable, independent and powerful health care consumer.Let's face it, purchasing health care services can be among life's most financially risky and frustrating endeavors.Often, consumers have no idea of the ultimate price they will pay for a particular medical test, procedure or course of therapy. Many hospitals and physicians' groups are reluctant to provide written estimates of expected charges in part because every person's body is different and an individual may need more medical attention than anticipated.Traditionally, it's also been tough to assess a hospital's quality of care. Most people rely heavily on a personal or familial sense of loyalty to one institution or another, or a community's general word-of-mouth about these providers.And typically, the "This is not a bill" statements produced by health insurers are so complicated that they may cloud the true costs of medical services for the patient and his or her "payer," whether that's an employer-sponsored health plan, a policy purchased on the open market, or a government program such as Medicare.But among its myriad provisions, the health care law requires health providers to operate with far greater transparency than ever before. Hospitals must file periodic reports to the government on a variety of "objective measures," from an institution's mortality (death) rates to patient satisfaction surveys.To help level the playing field, federal health officials are providing consumers with specific data that track the performance of health providers.The goal is for consumers to take greater responsibility for their health care and make more informed decisions.And the government also has begun sharing with the public information about the charges of various medical procedures at hospitals, whether it involves the cost of knee surgery or a pacemaker.Those charges are based on reimbursement claims filed by these hospitals for services rendered in the federal Medicare program for individuals ages 66 and above. Hospitals may use these charges as a starting point in their negotiations with self-pay patients. Even the Medicare system is unlikely to pay the full rate.This publicly reported data is now available online.On the "Hospital Compare" website, consumers can compare the track records of hospitals and outpatient centers on a brself storagead array of measures. The website -- .hospitalcompare.hhs.gov -- is sponsored by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. The site began several years ago, but the new health care law has helped kick these transparency efforts into high gear.Using this consumer-oriented website, you can now look up all the hospitals in the St. Louis area by entering a ZIP code on Hospital Compare, and then choose the institutions you wish to directly compare. Or, you can simply look up specific hospitals.One quick measure of hospital performance is the patient satisfaction survey. These surveys -- conducted by independent third parties and designed to assess how consumers perceive an institution -- include everything from a hospital's cleanliness to the loudness of hospital rooms at night and the communication skills of doctors and nurses in explaining to patients their diagnosis and treatments.Another important point of comparison is the hospitals' performance measures data for 30-day mortality rates for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia. Generally, hospitals are rated by federal health officials on whether they meet, surpass or fall below state and national standards.Similarly, a hospital's "readmission rate" for heart attack, heart failure and pneumonia is one measure of how well an institution fixes a patient's medical problem. A hospital that has a comparatively high rate of readmitting patients within 30 days of discharge may indicate high rates of complications, a failure to provide adequate discharge instructions to patients or inadequate follow-up care for patients.Hospital Compare tracks hospitals' rates of serious complications related to particular surgeries, including risky infections that can slow the healing process or cause serious bodily injury or death.The website also has information on hospital emergency rooms, including the average time it takes for a patient to be seen by a health professional.And it compares outpatient facilities' use of medical imagery such as mammograms. Centers with unusually high rates of medical imaging for certain procedures may put their patients at risk of radiation damage.Earlier this year, federal health officials began making public the data they collected on hospital charges for various medical procedures. With that data, it's possible for consumers to compare, for instance, charges for hip replacement surgery at hospitals across the state.Copyright: ___ (c)2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Visit the St. Louis Post-Dispatch at .stltoday.com Distributed by MCT Information Services迷你倉