Saint Paul – Minnesotans are the first in the nation to be able to comparison shop for health care providers using both quality and cost at a single website, Governor Tim Pawlenty announced today.

The website – www.mnhealthscores.org – now includes the average price paid by health plans to each medical group for the 100 most common health services. The nonprofit MN Community Measurement began the site in 2004 with the nation’s first data bank of quality and performance information by medical group.

“Providing quality and cost information gives consumers a powerful tool for health care purchasing decisions,” Governor Pawlenty said. “This reform is part of our larger effort to make Minnesota’s health care system even more market-driven, patient-centered and quality-focused. Comparing cost is a fact of life in almost every other aspect of life, but it’s a fundamental change in health care. By increasing transparency we hope to hold down costs and improve quality.”

Last summer, Governor Pawlenty announced that Minnesota’s private health plans had agreed to provide price and quality data on a single website. State government, health plans, and providers have worked together on numerous other health care reform efforts.

“Today’s announcement is a market-driven success,” Governor Pawlenty said. “This is not government intervention and no legislation was needed. This is simply the buyer, through the Smart Buy Alliance, working with health plans and providers to meet the community’s needs.”

The Smart Buy Alliance (http://www.smartbuyalliance.com) is a public/private coalition, including state government, that uses its combined purchasing influence of more than 60 percent of Minnesota’s population to drive improvement in the health care delivery system through market-based principles.

Minnesota Community Measurement intends to add prices for more services to the website on an ongoing basis, and provider price changes will be tracked over time. The site will be particularly useful for Minnesotans with consumer-directed health savings accounts (HSAs), health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) and cash payers.

The impact of transparency is helpful for more than just consumers. Providers will be motivated to compare themselves to others and may make changes in their own clinics to stay competitive. This site can be accessed directly at www.mnhealthscores.org or through www.MinnesotaHealthInfo.com, a clearinghouse for an expanding wealth of health care consumer information.

In addition to the new online cost and quality information, Governor Pawlenty has initiated a number of health care reforms including:

• Giving Minnesotans access to an online personal health portfolio by 2011. The Pawlenty Administration is working to create a secure and portable online personal health portfolio for each of the state’s approximately 50,000 employees by the end of this year.
  
  
• Governor Pawlenty signed historic legislation last year to advance Minnesota’s health care system by improving access to health care price and quality information, creating a statewide health improvement program, becoming the first state in the nation to require all health care providers to use e-prescribing, creating patient-centered “health care homes” to provide comprehensive primary care, and establishing payment reform based on financial incentives to improve quality and reduce cost. The health care reform package is projected to save 12 percent in health care costs.
  
  
• Governor Pawlenty joined leaders from Minnesota’s largest health care organizations to announce the Minnesota Health Information Exchange (MN-HIE) that will connect doctors, hospitals and clinics across health care systems so they can quickly access medical records needed for patient treatment during a medical emergency or for delivering routine care.
  
  
• Governor Pawlenty signed legislation in 2007 creating a new uniform billing and coding process to increase system efficiency and lower health care costs. All providers and payers are required to exchange routine administrative transactions electronically in a single standard format.
  
  
• The State of Minnesota is implementing e-prescribing for state employees and their dependents through a new prescription benefits manager (PBM). A single PBM will increase efficiency and save the state about $5 million a year. The savings will go directly back to the health plan to help control rising health care premiums.
  
  
• Governor Pawlenty introduced QCare – Quality Care and Rewarding Excellence, a new quality standard that will be used to reward top performing providers while saving money. QCare identifies quality measures, sets aggressive outcome targets for health care providers, makes comparable measures transparent to the public and changes the payment system to reward quality rather than quantity. Governor Pawlenty’s QCare executive order instructs the state agencies responsible for Medicaid and state employee health benefits to add provisions to their contracts with health plans and other vendors to help meet the goals.
  
  
• Minnesota has the nation’s most comprehensive report card for nursing homes to help compare patient satisfaction and quality of care in Minnesota nursing homes.
  
  
• Minnesota’s Medicaid program, the state employee health benefits program, and nine private sector employers representing one-seventh of all Minnesotans, instituted one of the largest state-based health care pay-for-performance efforts in the nation. Under Bridges to Excellence, health care providers who demonstrate superior outcomes with patients with certain chronic diseases receive special recognition and financial bonuses.
  
  
• Minnesota is the first state to require the reporting of certain medical errors in hospitals. There is a public-private marketplace agreement not to pay for these adverse events.
  
  
• Created the Minnesota e-Health Advisory Committee and advanced $1.5 million in grants to underserved areas to accelerate the adoption of interoperable medical records making health care safer, more effective and more efficient.
  
  
• Created the Governor’s Health Cabinet to bring together the heads of state agencies with responsibilities for health care purchasing, regulation and delivery, including agencies that administer Medicaid and the state employee health benefits plan. The Health Cabinet works together in implementing more efficient health care purchasing and measurement strategies.
  
  
• Established the Smart Buy Alliance, a dramatically improved way for employers and groups to buy health care for their employees and members. The state of Minnesota joined with private business and labor groups to drive quality improvements and efficiencies in the health care delivery system. Alliance members have agreed to set uniform performance standards, cost/quality reporting requirements, and technology demands on health plans and providers and to favor providers and health plans that are certified for highest quality.
  
  
• Supported and signed into law the new Flexible Benefit Plan to reduce cost by allowing employers to eliminate unnecessary mandates in the insurance plan they offer employees.
  
  
• Supported and signed legislation to require hospitals, providers, health plans and pharmacists to disclose price information to the public so consumers can better understand what they are paying for health care.