Be on the right side of history when it comes to price transparency

The Ohio Surgery Center recently started using a Price Estimator on their website. But it’s different than how most other surgery centers are implementing price transparency.

Most surgery centers simply list a menu of cash prices

There are 2 problems with this.

1. What if the consumer is using their insurance and need to know the allowable they may be expected to pay? That would be different than the cash price listed on the site.
2. Anyone can see these cash prices. So the surgery center has no way of knowing who is looking at them. Therefore, they have no way of following up to assist the consumer in navigating them through the healthcare process.

With the Price Estimator on the Ohio Surgery Center’s website, both of these problems are addressed:

1. The consumer can first choose their insurance plan that the Surgery Center accepts so they can see what their allowable is because they’ll probably be paying out of pocket if they haven’t met their deductible and…
2. The consumer must first provide their contact info before they are instantly and automatically sent an email with a breakdown of their out of pocket costs.

Because of this, the Ohio Surgery center has received 28 leads in the last 2 months through this one lead generation source. How many leads does a surgery center that just lists their prices get? Who knows because the consumer doesn’t have to enter their contact info to see the price! They’re just giving the milk away for free.

With consumers becoming more sophisticated when it comes to asking about their financial responsibility, more consumers will search for care that’s affordable without cutting quality, even if it’s outside of their network. It will be ever more important for surgery centers to capture the consumer’s contact info.

Surgery centers that simply list their prices will find themselves on the wrong side of history. Those that recognize the importance of combining lead generation with price transparency will be the ones to watch in their community. #PriceTransCAREncy

Click here for the original blog post written by Dr. Kaplan for BuildMyBod.