Credit: Rhoda Baer
Searching a health service pricing website prior to receiving medical care can reduce patients’ payments, but it may have negative effects as well, researchers have reported in JAMA.
Their study showed that searching the website allowed patients to pay lower prices for clinical services such as advanced imaging and lab tests.
However, the researchers suggested that knowing the price of services ahead of time may prompt some patients to forgo care.
And although cost savings from price shopping might lead to improved treatment adherence, it might also lead to overuse of services.
Neeraj Sood, PhD, of the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and his colleagues examined the association between price availability and the total claims payments (the total amount paid by patient and insurer) for lab tests, advanced imaging services, and clinician office visits.
The researchers compared payments made by patients who searched a pricing website before using a service to patients who had not researched pricing. The team analyzed medical claims data from 2010 to 2013. This included 502,949 patients who were insured in the US by 18 employers who provided a price transparency platform to their employees.
Patients with access to the pricing website 14 days before receiving care had lower claim payments than those who did not. Adjusted payments were approximately 14% lower for lab tests, 13% lower for advanced imaging, and 1% lower for clinician office visits.
The relative differences translated into lower absolute dollar payments of $3.45 for lab tests, $124.74 for advanced imaging, and $1.18 for clinician office visits.
In the period before either group had access to the pricing website, payments for searchers were about 4% higher for lab tests and 6% higher for advanced imaging but 0.26% lower for office visits than for nonsearchers.
The researchers said future studies should evaluate services beyond those examined in this study. They should also examine how the use of care is affected to better understand the broader effect of price transparency on healthcare spending and population health.
This study was published alongside a related editorial.
