As radiology departments across the country work to make their pricing more transparent, one hospital-based imaging practice has been at it for years and is now reaping the financial rewards.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia has pushed its benefits specialists up to the front lines, allowing patients to request out-of-pocket estimates for exams before scheduling care. Consumers can do so not just through the portal, but also email or phone.
CHOP has seen remarkable gains from the change, with requests more than doubling since the first year, up to 1,737. They believe that more patients are choosing their pediatric hospital because of cost transparency, with revenue losses from such exams plummeting sevenfold, noted experts with Children’s and the University of Pennsylvania.
“Diagnostic radiology is well-positioned to provide these estimates,” Summer Kaplan, MD, and Hansel Otero, MD, wrote this month in the American College of Radiology’s Bulletin. “Imaging exams rarely vary from the requested service, often resulting in predictable out-of-pocket costs.”
The service has proven especially powerful for families on fixed budgets or those with high-deductible health plans. Kaplan and Otero additionally see it as a way to help inpatients navigate to outpatient follow-up imaging care later down the line.
“For practices struggling to recover from COVID-19-induced loss of outpatient volume, providing cost estimates up front may help us understand how economic distress contributes to low visit numbers,” they concluded. “Out-of-pocket costs in healthcare shouldn’t be a mystery and providing the answer benefits both patients and medical practices.”
You can read more of their piece in the ACR Bulletin below.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.