How price transparency helped an Arizona health system achieve financial turnaround

Efforts to understand costs and openly share information on healthcare prices played a key role in a major Arizona health system's successful turnaround from a financial crisis, according to a feature article in the spring issue of Frontiers of Health Services Management, an official publication of the American College of Healthcare Executives. At Maricopa Integrated Health System, price transparency and the demonstration of cost-effective, high-quality service to patients have become strategic imperatives, and essential components of the system's comeback story. In 2014, MIHS was on an "unsustainable financial trajectory," with an operating deficit of more than $74 million. Arizona's largest public healthcare system and a major training center, MIHS is a safety-net system, predominantly serving patients on Medicaid and other public insurance.