SPRINGFIELD – On just about every one of these hospital websites, it says We accept this credit card, here is how to get to our billing department, and while I am not critical of this, there also needs to be price information that people need, said Barbara Anthony, author of the Boston-based Pioneer Institutes just released policy brief, Mass Hospitals Weak on Price Transparency.
The price information Anthony refers to is the cost of a medical service or procedure. This means what the consumers insurer has agreed to pay the provider. It is what hospitals, physicians, clinics and insurance companies are required by state law to make available in advance to consumers and prospective patients and within a two-day time period.
It is what Anthony, the institutes senior fellow in healthcare, went in search of when contacting 22 hospitals and 10 clinics, including Baystate and Holyoke medical centers, as well as Baystate Franklin, in Greenfield, and Cooley Dickinson Hospital, in Northampton, for their cost of an MRI of the left knee without contrast.
Her seven-day quest was driven by her belief that such price transparency is a national conversation, and Anthony ought to know. She was undersecretary of the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation when the state law began to take effect in 2013.
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