Posting prices for surgical procedures is unique. I am not aware of another facility that has done this…I would welcome any other facilities that have posted prices online to comment and welcome other facilities that haven’t posted their prices to do so and we’ll begin (to the benefit of the purchasing public) a friendly price war! Confident that our prices were lower than most of our competitors and that our quality of care was unsurpassed, we decided to post our prices in hopes of gaining patients who were paying for their own care (uninsured, high deductible, Canadians). Rather than have self-insured companies divulge what they were paying to large in-network hospitals for the same services we offered, we thought it made sense to post what we would provide the service for…for all to see. This approach has brought us very appreciative patients but has also raised some interesting and very important questions. Why is the same procedure at a not-for-profit hospital 4 to 6 times the cost? Why would insurers design their policies with separate out of network deductibles and penalties to increase the likelihood that the very expensive big hospitals are more likely to “capture” the patient?
G. Keith Smith, M.D.
