Cost transparency in otolaryngology: Outpatient procedures cost information at New England hospitals

Healthcare costs have dramatically increased, resulting in barriers to care for many Americans. To address this, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services implemented a price transparency mandate, requiring hospitals to provide cost-estimate tools. This study evaluates the accessibility and usability of these tools for common otolaryngology outpatient procedures.

Cost transparency was investigated using cost-estimate tools from websites of the seven New England hospitals ranked on the US News top 50 list. Ten common current procedural terminology codes were used to collect data on availability of cost information, cost comparison, and ease-of-use by six investigators acting as "patients" for each hospital and procedure.

All investigated hospitals had cost-estimate tools, with a 35.7 % mean success rate of generating an estimate. The mean times to cost-estimate tools and generated estimates were 35.69 and 34.15 s, respectively. Pre-insurance costs varied by hospital and procedure; creation of eardrum had the largest range. Seven out of ten procedures resulted in lower post-insurance costs. The mean ease-of-use rating was 5.76 out of ten.

All hospitals complied with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services price transparency policy. The information available is sparse, difficult to access, and frequently lacks specific estimates for common otolaryngology procedures. Although hospitals are following new Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services mandates, the estimators currently in existence are ineffective tools for financial decision-making.