Hospital Cost Tool and Resources

The National Academy for State Health Policy’s Hospital Cost Tool helps purchasers and regulators better assess hospitals’ costs, their public and commercial payer mix, their cost recovery from Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial payers, and more. The tool uses data from a hospital’s annual Medicare cost report (MCR) to analyze to what extent its payments cover its reported patient care costs. 

The tool also calculates the amount commercial payers would need to pay to cover their patients’ hospital costs and any balance from government program payments, unallocated MCR operating costs, disallowed MCR costs, and hospital’s other income/other expense. The tool gives states, employers, and other purchasers of hospital care critical data to inform their cost-containment discussions with hospitals.