EXHIBIT 2. Illustration of How to Implement the Consumer-Pathway: Report Card for Maternity Hospitals.

SOURCE: Author’s views

Footnote: In this Exhibit, we illustrate our recommendations on how public reports can better engage consumers. We focus on choice of a maternity hospitals, an area of health care where patients are motivated and have the time to make a choice. We present the key piece of information that consumers want, their out-of-pocket costs. We also differentiate between the high-value providers by putting them in a separate section and highlight them in green. Because we recognize consumers may distrust the cost information and link higher costs with higher quality, we made quality the first column. We do not even list the cost metrics used to distinguish between the two tiers (that information is available using the question symbol for only those that want more data). In some sense we are creating different depths of data, the initial report for the “1 minute reader” while the more in depth information is available for the reader with greater interest.