How consistent is pricing for healthcare services?

Pricing for healthcare services -- including imaging -- isn't as consistent across the U.S. as it should be, according to a study published October 27 in JAMA Health Forum.The findings underscore how important it is for patients to understand pricing variability in healthcare, wrote a team led by Benjamin Chartock, PhD, of Bentley University in Waltham, MA."Informed healthcare consumerism is a potential lever for managing costs and improving patient satisfaction," the group noted.More than half of Americans carry private healthcare insurance, for which fees are negotiated rather than set by an entity such as Medicare, the study authors explained. This negotiation contributes to private insurance prices that are often higher than Medicare rates and variable, they said. Despite the passage of policies that seek to make healthcare pricing clear, there's more work to be done."The private market lacked meaningful price transparency for patients and purchasers until the recent implementation of Hospital Price Transparency and Transparency in Coverage (TiC) rules … [and lack] of transparency limits the ability of regulators to monitor prices and of employers, patients, and purchasers to impose market discipline on prices," they wrote.Chartock's group sought to investigate variations in healthcare services using 2022 TiC price data from Humana (which mostly provides Medicare Advantage benefits but also covers about one million individuals with commercial insurance). The group focus...

Source: AuntMinnie.com Headlines - October 27, 2023 Category: Radiology Authors: Kate Madden Yee Tags: Practice Management Source Type: news