Nov 9 2011
New this morning on
Kaiser Health News' blog: reporter Christian Torres writes about a new Health Affairs study on bundling health payments. "
Researchers reporting in Health Affairs on Monday found that, after adjusting for factors like the severity of illness, Medicare payments to hospitals differ by more than $7,700 for back surgery and $6,900 for hip replacement. In each case, that is a difference of more than 30 percent between the hospitals in the highest-priced group and those in the lowest-priced group. Two other surgeries – coronary artery bypass grafting and colectomy to remove all or part of the colon – had price differences of more than 10 percent between the least- and most-expensive" (Torres, 11/7). Stay tuned to
Capsules throughout the day.
 This article was reprinted from kaiserhealthnews.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
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