I'm author of Hacking Healthcare for O'Reilly, 20 year health system executive, blah, blah.
It's very easy for people to forget the scale of the US "health system", we are talking 1/5, maybe more, of the entire US economy. If US healthcare spending were a country, it would have the third largest GDP in the world. Accidents of history and the massive federal beauracracy created the crazy monster of ICD/CPT codes that results in the very clumsy way of pricing healthcare services that results in this massive matrix of data.
As pointed out elsewhere there is a tremendous amount of cost distribution that goes into the code matrix and this plays a large role in negotiations with health insurers as well. Ground is given in one set of procedures and lost in others.
This is a big step in shining light into areas that need it to improve the system overall.
It's very easy for people to forget the scale of the US "health system", we are talking 1/5, maybe more, of the entire US economy. If US healthcare spending were a country, it would have the third largest GDP in the world. Accidents of history and the massive federal beauracracy created the crazy monster of ICD/CPT codes that results in the very clumsy way of pricing healthcare services that results in this massive matrix of data.
As pointed out elsewhere there is a tremendous amount of cost distribution that goes into the code matrix and this plays a large role in negotiations with health insurers as well. Ground is given in one set of procedures and lost in others.
This is a big step in shining light into areas that need it to improve the system overall.