FOREST FIRE NEAR DURANGO GROWS TO 250 ACRES

REPORT: HEALTH CARE NEEDS TRANSPARENCY

A fire near Durango that has forced the evacuation of 170 homes has grown to 250 acres. The wildfire, which began when a home burned down, is burning on the steep and difficult terrain of Lightner Creek Canyon. »

Members of a commission studying the rising cost of health care in Colorado released a blunt report Thursday telling state officials they will need to show “extraordinary public leadership” to keep health spending from swallowing household budgets.

The report is the last of three scheduled analyses by the Colorado Commission on Affordable Health Care, which the legislature formed in 2014 to investigate one of the state’s and nation’s most pressing economic issues. The commission found that growth in health care spending in Colorado has outpaced growth of the rest of the economy, and the new report contains dozens of recommendations for ways that lawmakers, regulators, and heath care companies can address the trend.

“Just as no single factor is responsible for our high and rising health care costs, no single policy solution will be adequate to meet this challenge,” the report states.

Many of the recommendations, though, focus on a common theme: transparency.

The report argues that transparency in pricing and outcome data will help patients, doctors, hospitals and insurers all make better choices.

The commission recommends developing an easy-to-understand database where people can look up what certain procedures generally cost, and it also pitches a pilot program that would provide state employees with more transparent price and benefit information for elective procedures.

If successful, the pilot program could serve as a model for private employers, said Bill Lindsay, the commission’s chairman.

“Transparency works for not just the consumers but also the providers,” Lindsay said in an interview, adding, “Markets can’t work if there isn’t transparency with what’s happening.”

But the commission also encountered a problem when it comes to showing people how much health care really costs. Lindsay said the data the state currently collects often aren’t detailed enough for deep analysis.

As an example, he pointed to the issue of freestanding emergency rooms, which

have boomed across the metro area and can be re- sponsible for large, unexpected bills for patients.

Because many freestanding emergency rooms are affiliated with a flagship hospital, the commission found, it is impossible to separate out their billing data from the larger hospital’s, Lindsay said.

“From a broad standpoint,” he said, “we need more effective data analytics on the state level.”