Florida unveils new hospital price comparison website
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.
DeSantis had asked the
According to Florida Health Price Finder, a care bundle in
The average cost of the procedure is about
The website, which is operated by the
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.
"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
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
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.
"We will also provide, upon request, estimated hospital charges and fees for physicians employed by
Rueben of
"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.
Price estimators
-- AdventHealth: www.adventhealth.com/price-estimator
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-- ClearHealthCosts: clearhealthcosts.com/
-- Florida Health Price Finder: pricing.floridahealthfinder.gov/
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-- 10 questions to ask about the cost of your care: clearhealthcosts.com/blog/2017/04/find-stuff-costs-10-easy-questions/
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