Sarah Kliff's slides from the Center for Health Journalism webinar, "‘It’s the Prices, Stupid’: How sky-high prices are crippling our health care system," 12.6.17 More info: https://www.centerforhealthjournalism.org/content/its-prices-stupid-how-sky-high-prices-are-crippling-our-health-care-system

1. “It’s the prices, stupid”
How to report stories about health care prices
Sarah Kliff
Vox

2. It all started with a Band-Aid

4. I got curious.
● How are facility fees set?
● How big of a role do they play in emergency room billing?
● How much do they vary from one hospital to another?
● What do they mean for patients?

5. That’s why we launched our ER Billing Database

6. ● Better understand how much facility fees cost
● Better understand how much facility fees vary
● Tell stories about how facility fees matter in patients’ lives
● Shed light on an opaque part of the health care system
Our goals

7. Our progress
● We’ve received over 600 bills
● We have bills from 48 states (currently missing Arkansas
and Wyoming)
● We published our first story, combining data from our
database with data from the Health Care Cost Institute
● We have created an advisory network of 100+ experts
who have volunteered to assist with the project

8. Our first story combines
personal stories from our
database with HCCI’s much
larger collection (70 million
ER visits) to tell the story of
why the price of facility fees
have increased dramatically
since 2009.

9. The American Hospital Association warned members about
this project
Ms. Kliff is soliciting patient bills from emergency department visits in the
U.S. over the past five years (2012 to 2017). An announcement on this
project is found HERE. We expect to see stories throughout the year and
in 2018.
We encourage you and your entire team to be certain that you remain
familiar with your organization’s policies and procedures on patient billing,
financial assistance policies, and how to talk about them with patients,
their families, and the public.

10. We had some hurdles
● Legal concerns — what would it mean to collect personal
medical information
● Technical — how do we store the data securely?
● Outreach — what can we do to get people to send us their
bills?
● Expertise — how would we handle analyzing all our bills?

11. You can do these stories too
● You don’t need a fancy database
● You just need to be curious about why health care works
the way it works

12. How to write stories about health prices
● Solicit medical bills from your readers
○ Use your own social media accounts — or your
publication’s
○ Use local non-profits that work with patients
○ You just need one bill to start!
● Then start asking “why?”
○ Talk to health care experts about decoding the bill
○ Talk to the hospital about how the bill was set

13. A few more tips
● Don’t be afraid to ask “dumb” questions
● Don’t take no for an answer — send your request to a
hospital multiple times
● Look for outside collaborators who can bring more data
○ All-payer claims databases are a great place to start

14. Thanks!
Email: sarah.kliff@vox.com
Twitter: @sarahkliff