This tool contains hospital pricing data from across the United States for 100 Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs) (DRGs are diagnoses, conditions, or procedures). Here you can look up pricing with great transparency by looking at specific conditions on a national scale (looking at data on a regional basis) or on a regional scale (looking at hospital-specific information). Hopefully this will help consumers make better decisions about where to find healthcare, as well as give some insights to policy-makers, journalists and others with a curiosity or interest in our healthcare system.


 


See the Data

If you want to start playing with the data right away, go for it. Just select a DRG from the list below.


How to Read the Data

There are two data interfaces with which to become familar. First is the national view of all Hospital Referral Regions (HRRs). The legend below explains how to read the data in this view.

 

The second view is visible when you click on a HRR bar. The legend below explains what you'll see.

Notes on the Technology

This visualization was built using D3 for the front-end and PHP/MySQL on the back-end to handle the large amount of data. D3 renders graphics in SVG, which does not work for some older browsers. Users of those browsers will be redirected to a page suggesting they try a different browser. (SORRY!)

Notes on the Data

The hospital pricing data comes from Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and was provided in the context of a data visualization contest put on by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Health 2.0, and visualizing.org. The hospital quality data is also from CMS and uses their Hospital Value Based Purchasing Total Performance Scores, which are combine multiple measures of hospital quality and affect the amount CMS pays hospitals for their services. Income data comes from the United States Census.