Hospitals Brilliantly Skirting Law
I think the hospitals are having fun with the new transparency law. Since they truly don’t want to disclose or compete they are opting to confuse. It’s a brilliant ruse and they are all doing it. Per the NY Times:
The data, posted online in spreadsheets for thousands of procedures, is incomprehensible and unusable by patients — a hodgepodge of numbers and technical medical terms, displayed in formats that vary from hospital to hospital. It is nearly impossible for consumers to compare prices for the same service at different hospitals because no two hospitals seem to describe services in the same way. Nor can consumers divine how much they will have to pay out of pocket.
How awesome is that? Here is my favorite quote from a patient:
“This is gibberish, totally meaningless, a foreign language to me,” said Sara Stovall, 41, of Charlottesville, Va., after looking at price lists for hospitals in her area.
Hey, Mrs. Stovall, check out the Monticello Community Surgical Center right there on Route 29. I had my knee scoped there for $3800 that included everything even pre and post doctor visits. I screenshot another procedure cost for you and put it up top. Check them out. Only if you do this can you force these major hospital idiots to play ball.
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That is why the administrators get the big bucks. They figure out and game the system unlike us docs.
Data guys should be able to pull all of this together pretty quickly… Imagine… be the Priceline.com for hospital care…
(What are we doing sitting here blogging about it!!!? Let’s get to work!)