Florida unveils new hospital price comparison website

Orlando Sentinel (FL)

Nov. 7--It's been four years since the passage of health-care transparency legislation in Florida, part of which called for a website where consumers could see the price estimates for non-emergency procedures like hip and knee replacement.

That website, Florida Health Price Finder, has been up for a year now, featuring regional price comparisons. But just this week it was relaunched to include facility-level data, where consumers can find out the estimated cost of more than 40 procedures at their local hospitals.

"Health care is the only industry where a consumer purchases something without knowing the price or value, and that needs to change," said Gov. Ron DeSantis in a news release announcing the launch of the new data. "Ultimately, my goal is to make Florida's health care system the most transparent, most affordable and highest quality health care system in the nation."

DeSantis had asked the Agency for Health Care Administration in February to expedite the implementation of the website with a focus on facility-level data.

According to Florida Health Price Finder, a care bundle in Orlando for a knee replacement, which includes all the costs associated with the procedure, is about $53,000 at AdventHealth Orlando and about $38,000 at Orlando Health Orlando Regional Medical Center. The cheapest rate is at Orlando Health Health Central Hospital at $34,000.

The average cost of the procedure is about $39,000 in Orange County, $37,000 in Florida and $36,000 in the nation.

The website, which is operated by the Agency for Health Care Administration and built by D.C.-based Health Care Cost Institute, is based on millions of hospital and ambulatory surgery center claims data filed by insurance companies.

Hospitals with low volume for a procedure will not show up on the comparison tool, because the low number might not yield a statistically valid average.

Its website is also linked to Florida Health Finder, which houses information about the health facilities, ranging from their inspection reports to quality ratings.

The Florida Hospital Association, which has its own price estimate tool called MissiontoCare.org, raised concerns about the validity of the newly released data, because the hospitals didn't get a chance to review them before they were posted on Florida Health Price Finder.

"It's just that normally when you put data out like this about individual hospitals, the standard for how you do it would be to give the hospitals a short amount of time to say, 'Yes, this is valid.' or 'No, there's a problem,'" said Bruce Rueben, president of the Florida Hospital Association. "There needs to be just an attempt to make sure that you're comparing apples to apples."

The association's MissiontoCare.org website uses publicly-available data that hospitals report to the state, instead of using health insurance claims.

Reuben said the association had already heard from several hospitals that had concerns about the information on Florida Hospital Price Finder.

"We've asked all the hospitals to let us know what their concerns are and to let he Agency for Health Care Administration as well," he said.

Price transparency efforts are still far from perfect, and the actual cost of the procedures remains a mystery.

Hospitals have a chargemaster, which is the official list of every billable service, filled with codes, medical jargon and dollar signs. Some experts have compared it to a car's sticker price because chargemaster prices don't reflect all the downstream negotiations with insurance companies before you get your bill in the mail.

The list prices vary widely across hospitals and within markets, and they're on average more than three times what hospitals are paid by the insurance companies for treating a patient, studies have shown.

Most hospitals encourage consumers to contact them to ask for more information.

Orlando Health officials, for example, said that they provide patients with price estimates upon request.

"We will also provide, upon request, estimated hospital charges and fees for physicians employed by Orlando Health and their services as well as contact information for non-emergency contracted services, such as anesthesiology," the health system said in a statement.

Rueben of Florida Hospital Association encouraged consumers to look at all the available resources.

"I don't think any one website has enough information [to help] someone make a decision," he said. "But I think you have to look at everything that's out there. What all of these websites and information sources do is give someone then the information they need to ask questions, to ask informed questions, about the healthcare that's being recommended for them."

Earlier this year, in a proposed regulation, the federal government required all hospitals to post their list prices on their websites. The results were a mixed bag of information, some of which were suited for machine consumption only.

The final decision on the proposed rule has been delayed for now.

nmiller@orlandosentinel.com.

Price estimators

-- AdventHealth: www.adventhealth.com/price-estimator

-- Orlando Health: www.orlandohealth.com/patients-and-visitors/patient-financial-resources

-- HCA Healthcare: hcahealthcare.com/patients/pricing-and-financial-information.dot

-- ClearHealthCosts: clearhealthcosts.com/

-- Florida Health Price Finder: pricing.floridahealthfinder.gov/

-- FAIR Health: www.fairhealthconsumer.org/

-- 10 questions to ask about the cost of your care: clearhealthcosts.com/blog/2017/04/find-stuff-costs-10-easy-questions/

-- MDsave: www.mdsave.com/

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