Becker's Healthcare September 20, 2023
Hospital price quotes vary, depending on how you ask.
A study published Sept. 18 in JAMA Internal Medicine explored this phenomenon. Mark Cuban co-authored the report, along with affiliates of multiple universities, including Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University, both based in Houston.
Sixty U.S. hospitals were evaluated in the study: 20 top-ranked, 20 safety-net and 20 others. The researchers sent “secret shoppers” to call each hospital and request the lowest cash price for vaginal childbirth and brain MRI. They compared the prices given over the telephone to the prices reported on the hospitals’ websites.
For brain MRI, 85 percent of top-ranked and 50 percent of safety-net hospitals provided both phone and online prices, along with...
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