NYC Hospital Price Analysis
Anne Bode, March 2021
Thinkin' about healthcare prices like...
In 2021, hospitals are required to publish the rates they charge for every procedure they offer, along with all of the rates they negotiate with public and private insurance. The key is that they are required to publish this information in a machine-readable format. So we can finally do some analysis!
The problem is that the fee for noncompliance is only $300 per hospital per day. That is not high enough to be meaningful for many hospital systems. So unfortunately, not many hospital systems have published this information and are choosing to remain in noncompliance. See this helpful gothamist article: NY Hospitals Slow To Comply With New Price Transparency Rule That Took Effect This Month.
Fortunately, the NYC Public Hospital System has provided decent data. They include their list, cash, and negotiated rates with a number of public and (perhaps not all) private insurers.
In this project we will look at:
- List price vs. cash price vs. negotiated price per procedure (within the same hospital)
- List price and cash price for the same procedure across the different hospitals within the NYC public hospital system
import pandas as pd
import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt