For the second year in a row, Connecticut has received a failing grade from a nonprofit that measures healthcare price transparency.
Catalyst for Payment Reform (CPR) and Health Care Incentives Improvement Institute — the two groups that launched the report card in 2013 — increased their grading standards this year. That resulted in failing grades for 45 states, the same number as last year.
No state received an ‘A.’ Massachusetts and Maine got a ‘B’ and Colorado, Virginia, and Vermont got a ‘C.’
“Access to meaningful price information is more important than ever as consumers continue to take on a rising share of expenses,” Suzanne Delbanco, executive director of CPR, said in a statement. “While many states have made progress, there’s still much more work to be done for the majority of residents in the United States to have access to essential information on the price of health care.”
This year’s report assessed states’ regulations on price transparency, and the existence or lack of websites and all-payer claims databases (APCD). Last year’s report looked solely at transparency laws.
Connecticut is in the midst of building its own APCD, which most of its New England peers have already.
The report said even states with strong laws and regulations on transparency sometimes offer poorly designed or nonfunctioning tools to healthcare consumers.
For example, New Hampshire, which was one of the earlier states to adopt an all-payer claims database and received a ‘C’ in last year’s report, got a failing grade this year because its APCD website is down and may not be back up for an extended period, the group said.
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