Photo: EyeEm
Consumer Price Transparency With Healthcare Is Working In Florida
Bottom Line: A lot has happened in nearly two years and that’s about how long it’s been since the state of Florida rolled out its price transparency website for healthcare. As a huge advocate of consumer price transparency, I was immediately interested in the 2019 rollout of the state’s website aimed at allowing us to compare pricing on medical services. The greatest obstacle in more affordable healthcare has long been keeping you in the dark about what it actually costs, aka the insurance first model. Even if you have insurance, it serves you and all of us well be more informed and to shop for healthcare like we do everything else. With consideration for price and quality of care.
FloridaHealthPriceFinder.Gov is the state of Florida service which aggregates pricing information on specific non-emergency medical services from hospitals based on location. Two years ago, at the launch I priced something I’ve had, an appendectomy, for the purpose of seeing how the website worked. This was the result:
- National Average: $15,022
- Florida Average: $14,757
- Palm Beach County: $11,279
- Broward County: $11,915
- Miami-Dade: $17,261
Not much is cheaper today than two years ago, but check this out... Here’s where we stand today.
- National Average: $16,091 - 7% increase
- Florida Average: $14,747 - >1% decrease
- Palm Beach County: $11,164 – 1% decrease
- Broward County: $11,915 - Flat
- Miami-Dade: $16,674 – 4% decrease
Over two years ago the average cost of an appendectomy has risen by 7%. In Florida however, the cost has slightly decreased on average with the largest decrease in cost being in Florida’s largest county which was also the most expensive. As for the range in cost currently, it’s huge illustrating another point regarding the importance of being a good consumer of healthcare:
And as for the lowest the range of specific hospital pricing here was the range.
- Lowest: Jupiter Medical Center $5,960
- Highest: West Kendall Baptist Hospital $25,534
You hear frequent stories of huge variances in cost for similar services. This one example I pulled at random illustrates the point. Using this site can instantly help you become a much better consumer of healthcare. It can also aid in providing competitiveness in the marketplace based on pricing. If you have a preferred provider with pricing that’s not as competitive, perhaps you could also point them to the pricing on the site to see if they could match. This could be the next good step towards becoming more effective consumers of healthcare and it could clearly save us huge money.