How a Denver Post reporter connected Colorado patients’ health care costs to a hospital building boom

As is often the case, getting the state to share their findings was difficult. It required the filing of a Colorado Open Records Act request to get the preliminary reports. Those reports revealed Colorado was an outlier on capital construction for hospitals nationally, as well as for hospital administrative costs. More importantly, the consultants had reported to state officials that hospitals had hiked their prices by 76 percent over a seven-year stretch.

William Hickman