Business

Texas hospitals offer pricing site

NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted April 16, 2007

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The Texas Hospital Assn. has launched a Web site to allow patients the ability to price shop for procedures by looking at fee schedules for every hospital in the state.

TxPricePoint.com offers a list of caveats alerting patients that the prices will likely not reflect the actual charges due to discounts from insurers, contracted rates with Medicare and various other discounts and price factors. The Web site lists the number of discharges for procedures, the average length of stay and the average charge per day for each hospital and compares it with statewide data.

General hospital information is also presented, such as how much of the hospital's revenue comes from Medicare and Medicaid patients, how many charges are written off as charity care and how much is uncompensated. The site does not list quality data but links to other Web sites that do.

Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2007/04/16/bibf0416.htm.

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