Researchers from the University of California San Francisco and Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis found, for example, that charges for a lipid panel ranged from just $10 to $10,169, and the price of a basic metabolic panel ran from $35 to $7,303. Eight of the 10 blood tests in the study showed variation greater than 200 percent.
Furthermore, hospital characteristics and other factors didn’t fully explain the striking range of prices. The researchers wrote, “Though hospital ownership and teaching status were correlated with charges for many blood tests, few other hospital or market-level predictors significantly predicted blood test charges. At most our models predicted 21 percent of the variation in charges for these identical services.”
Furthermore, the findings “highlight the lack of predictability facing Americans paying full charges for healthcare, limiting their ability to act as rational consumers,” according to the study.
Lead study author Renee Hsia, MD, an associate professor at the UCSF School of Medicine, told Kaiser Health News the healthcare charging and payment systems are “irrational” and cannot be explained. While officials with the California Hospital Association have called the study irrelevant on the basis that most patients don’t actually pay the listed hospital charges, researchers argue the prices play a role in negotiations between providers and health insurers and can consequently drive up healthcare costs, according to the Kaiser report.
More articles on hospital charges:
10 things to know about rising hospital charges
Fitch: Hospital charge growth expected to remain slow
Report: HCA leads Florida hospitals in trauma fees
