Dana-Farber Cancer Institute
450 BROOKLINE AVANUE · BOSTON, MA · 02215
vs. the regional median (the other ~300 NY/NJ/CT hospitals publishing the same code). How is this computed?
All-codes score: median of price ratios across every available billing code. Based on 7,439 billing codes published by this hospital. A broader all-codes view (every commercial billing code this hospital publishes, 1,464 codes) puts the score at 1.91x.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute bills above peers — about 1.29x the regional median. Within departments, Inpatient prices are notably high (1.68x, 1,407 codes); Imaging is comparatively affordable (0.44x). The price distribution is predictable (A grade), so individual bills tend to be consistent within a category.
A nearby hospital 0.56 mi away is ~21% cheaper overall.
New England Baptist Hospital has an overall price level of 1.02x vs. this hospital's 1.29x, with 7,371 procedures in common.
why?
Price spread is narrow (IQR ratio 1.7x) with few outliers (2% above 3x)How A/B/C is determined: A = narrow price spread (IQR < 2.0×) with <5% of codes priced more than 3× the regional median. B = moderate (IQR 2.0–3.0× OR 5–20% above 3×). C = wider than that.
Cost by department
Each ratio compares this hospital's prices in that department to the median across NY/NJ/CT hospitals for the same department.
| Department | Ratio | Codes | % above median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Other | 1.40x | 2,227 | 89% |
| Lab | 0.85x | 1,655 | 24% |
| Inpatient | 1.68x | 1,407 | 100% |
| Surgery | 1.43x | 1,258 | 91% |
| Imaging | 0.44x | 654 | 9% |
| Drugs/Pharmacy | 1.34x | 91 | 78% |
| Cardiac | 1.26x | 62 | 65% |
| Therapy | 0.82x | 55 | 26% |
| Emergency/Eval | 2.40x | 30 | 100% |
Hospital info
- Beds: 30
- Annual discharges: 1,300
Methodology & sources
Prices extracted from this hospital's CMS-mandated machine-readable transparency file (45 CFR 180). Headline statistic: median of price ratios across every available billing code. Validated against RAND Hospital Price Transparency Study v5.1 employer claims data at Spearman ρ = 0.73 (n = 105 hospitals).
Download the original transparency file from Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.