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Hopkins health pricing tool a managed care hit

Hopkins health pricing tool a managed care hit. Baltimore Business Journal July 21.

Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore, MD, USA

Johns Hopkins University’s links with private enterprise to market a health-care pricing tool is paying off for the university. The number of clients licensing Hopkins’ computerized health care grouping system which tries to help managed care groups offer better health costs and care has grown 35-40 percent annually since the university started marketing its computerized program six years ago. Now the state of Maryland has signed on to use the system, called Ambulatory Care Groups. “ACGs provides a fairer, more accurate way to anticipate costs,” said John Folkemer, director of Maryland’s Health Services Analysis and Evaluation Administration in the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. “The big benefit is that organizations with less-healthy patients get compensated fairly.”