About

Our motivation was to solve a real world visual problem. We were interested in the health domain, because this is an area receiving heavy media attention for its need to receive design work. One area needing immediate work is health care services costs, and the transparency of the issues involved with that information. Costs are currently increasing, and patients are expressing difficulties accessing the cost for a particular health service prior to their visit. Thus, we are designing a visualization tool with a goal to allow prospective patients to inquire average health care costs, and for specific services. Our target audience is approximately ages 18-100+.

Using government provided data from data.gov, we have extrapolated useful information regarding health care services costs and average costs for specific services. This data has information from numerous hospitals around the country for the top 100 most popular(common) medical services from over 3000 hospitals that receive Medicare aid by the government. We allow the user to acquire details on demand by state or by service category. The user can filter data to specific search queries, (i.e. As a patient in Texan needing asthma treatment, I want to know the average costs for asthma healthcare service in Texas).

Major current day (2015) healthcare concerns we explore in some fashion with our design:
• 1. Lack of transparency
• 2. Health care costs for the average family are increasing

You may also notice that some of the datapoints within a drg have things like W/ MCC or W/O MCC or CC. This is what's called major complications and co-morbidities. Major complications means that the patient had something negative and out of the norm happen during the medical procedure. Co-morbidities means that the patient had multiple things going on besides the single service that the drg mentioned. For more information on this visit this website on MCC and CC.