Hospitals Find Way to Make Care Cheaper -- Make It Better - WSJ.com

Hospitals Find Way to Make Care Cheaper -- Make It Better - WSJ.com:

"Be it cereal or cars, buyers usually have an idea of how good the products are and how much they cost before they buy them.
That's not how U.S. health care works. Patients rarely know which hospitals offer top-quality lung or aortic surgery, and which are more likely to harm them. Hospitals don't compete on price and rarely publish measurements of their quality, if they measure it at all.
Except in Pennsylvania. For two decades, a state agency has published 'medical outcomes' -- death and complication rates -- from more than 50 types of treatments and surgery at hospitals. The state has found that publishing results can prompt hospitals to improve, and that good medical treatment is often less expensive than bad care."