Starting with the new year, hospitals across the nation are required to be more transparent about standard hospital charges by posting them online.
The federal mandate will make hospitals’ “gross charges” for every procedure, drug, and supply available online. However, this price is almost never paid with insurers, Medicare, and Medicaid utilizing lower negotiated prices.
OSF Healthcare’s Senior Vice President of Revenue Cycle Laurie Hurwitz tells WGIL that patients are all charged the same, but due to contracts with different insurers, the out of pocket costs will be different for each person.
“We have rules with government entities and all of those things, along with the patients benefit, impact the final out-of-pocket costs to the patient,” Hurwitz says. “So it’s really something that has to be looked at a patient level instead of looking at the chargemaster level.”
Hurwitz says that OSF is working to make their price estimates as accurate as possible by partnering with different insurers to get more accurate price ranges available.
She adds that that OSF has already been taken efforts to contact patients with prices for procedures, drugs, and more through the healthcare provider’s “My Chart” account.
