The South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control is touting the new health care data website launched in late January, saying it will help promote transparency. Regional health officials, however, say more work remains.

The new, easily navigable website, SCHealthData.org, features five years worth of profitability and occupancy data for the states 60 hospitals, from 2008 to 2012. The data includes how much each hospital collected from Medicaid for treating uninsured patients.

People can search for hospitals by name, find them on a map or compare up to four at a time from a list. The websites expected audience includes legislators and journalists as part of Phase One.

Its really targeted toward them because its higher-level data from hospitals like overall profitability, costs and occupancy rates. It doesnt tell you how much will be charged for an MRI or hip replacement. That will be in the second phase, said Tony Keck, director of the South Carolina Department of Health and Human Services.

We expect by sometime in mid-March that we will start doing hospital comparisons of prices for certain common procedures and other types of work done in hospitals, Keck said. Well be able to look at not only state Medicaid data, but state employee health plan data which is administered by Blue Cross and Blue Shield and, once we get federal approval, Medicare data, too.

Keck said the website is a good first step forward in making data more user-friendly.

I think theres a general consensus around the country that better transparency into pricing and quality for all health care services is really required if were going to get better value out of health care, he said. The South Carolina Health Data site is our first phase in helping people understand how much health care costs.

The SCDHHS reports that, on average, 17 percent of the states hospitals occupied bed days in 2012 were for Medicaid patients.

Twenty-three percent of the occupied beds at the Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg were for Medicaid patients in 2012. Eight percent of the occupied beds at the Southern Palmetto Hospital, formerly Barnwell County Hospital, were for Medicaid patients. Sixteen percent of the Colleton Medical Centers occupied beds were also for Medicaid patients during the same time period.

South Carolina hospitals 2012 bottom lines varied widely by hospital, with profits (or revenues in excess of expenses for nonprofit hospitals) as high as $159,745,573 and losses as much as $20,556,997. The RMC had a profit of $6,178,113 in 2012. Barnwell County Hospital showed a profit of $1,004,8446, while Colleton County Hospital had a profit of $3,365,011.

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Good first step Officials: New health care data website promotes transparency