The same knee, from $9,350 to $44,187.

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• CMS rates all six hospitals 'No Different Than the National Rate'. The complication column is not a ranking and the gaps inside it are not statistically distinguishable.
• The price is knee replacement only (CPT 27447). The outcome measure is CMS's combined hip AND knee complication rate, which is the closest published measure for this procedure family and is not knee-specific.
• Every figure is a MEDIAN across the plans that hospital publishes, and the spreads inside each hospital are wide: Texas Health Presbyterian's six commercial rates run $14,351 to $99,442. A given employer sits somewhere in that range, not at the median.
• Every hospital's complication interval overlaps every other hospital's. The lowest is 1.5 to 4.0 and the highest is 2.6 to 7.4.
• Coverage: 26 Dallas County hospitals report this measure, CMS suppressed 15 for too few cases, 11 carry a published score, 7 of those also publish a commercial rate, and 6 publish at least four. The other 20 are absent, not zero.
• One county. Dallas is one market and this says nothing about any other.
• Employer commercial rates only. Medicare Advantage, Medicaid and marketplace rates are different products at the same hospital and are excluded, because pooling them compares products rather than hospitals.
• The complication rate is measured on Medicare patients while the prices are what employer plans pay. Surgical quality belongs to the hospital rather than to the payer, but these are two different populations.
• CMS models and adjusts this rate for patient risk. The adjustment is CMS's, not ours, and we did not reproduce it.
• Hospital facility charges only. Not the surgeon's fee and not the whole episode.
• Median across the commercial plans each hospital publishes, from 6 to 14 rates per hospital. A single employer's rate may sit anywhere in that spread.
• Price periods and outcome periods do not align: current price files against outcomes measured through March 2024.
• Facility types are mixed. North Central Surgical and Baylor Las Colinas are physician-owned surgical hospitals; UT Southwestern Clements is an academic medical center. CMS risk-adjusts the outcome, but the price comparison does not stratify by facility type.