Our Data Validated Against Employer Claims
ρ = 0.68 rank agreement with RAND employer-claims data (n=85)
Two ways of measuring the same thing agree. Our rankings come from the prices hospitals publish; RAND's come from what employers actually paid in claims. Each point below is one hospital ranked both ways, cheapest to priciest. Perfect agreement would put every point on the diagonal.
Method: Spearman rank correlation across the 85 scoring-grade hospitals (high-confidence trimmed-cap score, A/B reliability tier) that also have a RAND v5.1 combined relative price. The chart plots the two rankings against each other, which is exactly what ρ measures. Including hospitals below the scoring bar loosens agreement to about 0.4, which is why the bar exists.
Verification: Cross-validated statistic
Data: recomputed on data refresh. Source: each hospital's CMS-mandated machine-readable file (45 CFR 180).