New Healthcare Price Transparency Tool Shows 83.9% Accuracy Rate
A new healthcare price transparency tool provides user-friendly information and showed an 83.9 percent accuracy rate among patients, a new study published in JAMA found.
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By - Healthcare Price transparency tools can provide accurate real-time estimates of ambulatory procedures. And a new cost estimation tool showed an 83.9 percent accuracy rate among patients, according to a recent study by researchers from Sutter Health and the Stanford Center for Biomedical Innovation.
“Healthcare cost transparency is understandably important to our patients,” study co-author Albert Chan, MD, MS, FAAFP, Sutter Health vice president and chief of digital patient experience, said in a statement. “Providing digital tools such as our online cost estimator is another example of our continued commitment to empower our patients with responsive, personalized care.”
Published in JAMA Network Open, the survey was completed by Sutter Health patients aged 18 years or older who had matching explanation of benefits statements from August 21, 2018, to April 9, 2019. At the end of the study, 4610 estimates were produced using the cost estimator tool. Of these, 3600 estimates (77.4 percent) were initiated online by patient self-service queries of Sutter Health’s patient portal. While 1041 estimates (22.6 percent) were created after queries to the Sutter Health Patient Telephone Service Center.
Less than 10 percent of those with matching benefits voiced their concerns about the difference between the estimates from the tool and the actual billing statement. Furthermore, 79.2 percent of participants found the tool easy to use, 87.2 percent would use it again, and 80 percent would recommend it to others.
Individualized price transparency tools have become more necessary for patients due to increased enrollment in high-deductible health insurance plans and mandates from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, researchers noted. Specifically, 46 percent of individuals in the US younger than 65 years are covered through high-deductible health plans.
Sutter Health, an integrated healthcare system in Northern California serving more than three million patients, created the Consumer Accessible Fee Estimation initiative to provide price transparency for patients. The cost estimator includes 220 common services from Sutter Health’s top 10 insurance payers by volume, the survey stated. Patients can search for services by keywords or by choosing from a list within categories such as immunizations and vaccines, laboratory tests, heart or lung tests, office visits, specialist consultations, and imaging services.
Chan and his colleagues designed a 16-question, self-administered survey to better understand patient experience for usability, satisfaction, loyalty, and suggestions for improvement. The sample only included patients with an end of benefits statement in order to verify the accuracy of the tool estimates, the researchers emphasized.
Almost two-thirds of survey respondents noted the benefit of the estimator tool for fiscal planning, which reinforces the need and importance of delivering digital patient engagement solutions that support the holistic healthcare needs of patients. “Our experience provides an example of successfully implementing a cost estimator tool integrated with the online patient portal with a high degree of patient satisfaction. Other health systems may benefit from integrating a similar functionality,” the report concluded.
