Physicians have traditionally been in the dark about how much they spend when ordering care for patients, but a 56-item price list for physicians at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston is shining a light on those price-tags, according to a WBUR report.
Affiliated Physicians Group, the largest group of private physicians that admits patients to Beth Israel, has distributed the list to its providers. Richard Parker, the medical director for Beth Israel’s physicians group, says the price list will help physicians consider procedures’ costs when they order them. He says understanding cost is integral to understanding value.
Some physicians were surprised with the cost of care, with one even growing frustrated. “One [price] that really pissed me off was that when you send someone to an ear, nose and throat [specialist], something like 80-90 percent of the time they get a flexible scope of their sinuses,” David Ives, MD, said in the report. Dr. Ives, a primary care physician and medical director of APG, said that flexible scopes are rarely more effective than having a physician examine the patient’s nose or throat, but the procedure costs 10 times more than the physical exam.
The price list will remain private to the physicians at APG and Beth Israel, since physicians, hospitals and payors don’t make contracted prices public.
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