hospital impact

Source: Modern Healthcare, by Roger Schillerstrom

Well, this hospital pricing thing obviously ain't going away. After the 60 minutes piece on the uninsured and pricing, AHA president lambasted the show. See his letter and CBS's response here. I'm no PR man, but I think CBS got the best of 'em.

Meanwhile, ModernHealthcare is running a poll this week on pricing transparency. Looks like 65% of respondents believe "increased transparency, especially regarding pricing practices, is critical to solving the industry's cost problems. I find that statistic quite amazing. I assumed most would agree with Paul Ginsberg of HSC who posted this opinion on the Healthcare Blog. Essentially, pricing will increase comparison shopping, but less people will shop than we think because:
(1) 10% of folks make up 70% of costs. and most of them won't be subject to financial incentives, so they won't be shopping too much.
(2) lots of folks just won't have time to shop given healthcare's urgency
(3) for a lot of services that would be very "shoppable" (e.g. a nose job), a face-to-face with the doc to get an estimate is necessary, adding too much work to shop
(4) healthcare just isn't that simple; one size does not fit all; price ranges (very big ones) seem appropriate.
(5) well, the cartoon above says it. oh, and one minor detail, what about quality of care?

Don't get me wrong. I think all hospitals should:
- be more transparent w/ pricing, mostly in regards to having a more consistent uninsured & discount policy
- report charity care and bad debt consistently (HFMA is in the process of establishing an industry standard)
- overall, pay more attention to community & have a compelling community benefit statement.

As I said last time, hospital pricing will continue to rise to the forefront - the story is just too easy for the mass media to tell, and hospitals are too easy of a target. But come on, this whole pricing transparency thing - if folks want real results in healthcare reform, they're barking up the wrong tree here.