A Healthcare Blue Book Survey finds that it is almost impossible to get prices ahead of time if a patient plans to have surgery in a hospital…
By Militza Richard
A new research paper from The Healthcare Blue Book entitled Surgery Pricing Secrets: The Challenges Patients Face, reveals that it is extremely difficult to find out the cost of surgery in advance.
Researchers contacted hospitals and ambulatory care centers (ASCs) in three markets —Raleigh-Durham, NC; Denver, CO; and Portland, OR— and asked them to provide the costs of an anterior cruciate ligament surgery of the knee for a patient without health insurance. Queries were primarily about facility fees, but researchers also asked respondents about other fees associated with the surgery.
They found that it took three times as many phone calls and four times as long to get pricing information from a hospital. In fact, many hospitals would not provide guaranteed prices and price ranges often varied by more than 100 percent. Facility fees were 3-4 times higher in a hospital than in an ASC, and ASCs were more likely to discount prices for cash customers; regardless of the patient's financial status.
"One of the main tenets of successful healthcare reform will be patients taking more responsibility for finding out what their care costs as they make treatment decisions," said Dr. Jeffrey Rice, Healthcare Blue Book CEO, and white paper author. "But until hospitals are able to provide exact pricing, managing out of pocket costs for both insured and self-pay patients is almost impossible."
For a copy of Surgery Pricing Secrets: The Challenges Patients Face go to: hwww.healthcarebluebook.com/page_HCBBNews.aspx.