American Hospitals Viewer Guide

Authors: Jaan Altosaar, PhD; Michele Tadiello, MMCi; Rachel Westlake, BCPA

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You've just watched American Hospitals and might be left scratching your head.

That was a lot of information!

Congratulations. You've just learned more about the health care system than most people in the United States.

In fact, you've learned more than most people in the United States who work in the health care system.

You've learned that the health care system is a complex system of incentives and information asymmetry between patients, providers (doctors and hospitals), payors (insurance companies), and the local, state, and federal governments.

As you absorb the information in the film, you might be left wondering:

• How can I use this information to help myself?

• How can I use this information to help my family?

• How can I use this information to help my community?

As a first step, consider the goals of Healthy California, which is founded on the principles that healthcare is a human right, and that publicly financed guaranteed health care — care with a single standard for all residents of California — is critical to our state’s social and economic well-being.

Next, check out this map:

This map shows every hospital in California and the rest of the country as defined by the federal government using this data.

The map is an initial prototype of hospital quality metrics released by the federal government, so you can see the quality of care in your community and use these metrics to inform decision-making.

This interactive map serves as a preliminary example of our upcoming final release, which will incorporate additional quality metrics for a more comprehensive evaluation. By clicking on a hospital, you can currently view and compare patient safety ratings with other hospitals across the country. To stay updated on our progress and gain access to the enhanced version, subscribe to our newsletter at tinyletter.com/onefact.

We are working on adding pricing information from hospitals to help you make decisions that affect your health or the health of those around you. For now, we have 4000+ hospitals` price sheets collected at https://data.payless.health/ which you can search by hospital CMS Certification Number (CCN, which you can look up here - https://data.cms.gov/tools/medicare-inpatient-hospital-look-up-tool).

Feel free to send this page to friends and family or other film viewers!

Send us an email if you want to contribute to either software, analysis, dissemination, or Help Pages: help@payless.health. We will follow up with you as we make progress toward our grant goals for the Brown Institute.

Feel free to read the Frequently Asked Questions page to learn how to contribute to the Help Pages.

You can also see our roadmap for the Help Pages here: https://github.com/orgs/onefact/projects/8/views/1

If you want to contribute to the software that powers these open source resources, you can see our roadmap for the quality metrics here: https://github.com/orgs/onefact/projects/12

We need help! If you are interested in contributing to the One Fact Foundation to enable us to deliver these free, open source resources across communities in America, please consider gifting $100, $1000, or $10,000 to the One Fact Foundation. Contributions are tax-deductible given our 501(c)(3) status (listed under Employer Identification Number or EIN, 88-2145154). To donate:

• use Stripe
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• or send a check to One Fact Foundation, 2093 Philadelphia Pike #1764, Claymont, DE 19703 (or via Schwab or Vanguard Charitable by using our EIN)