El Camino Hospital, a 443-bed hospital based in Mountain View, Calif., has rolled out a new price-estimator tool that allows patients to see the estimated out-of-pocket costs for about 80 procedures. They can also see which carriers cover those procedures.

A hospital located not far from Silicon Valley is giving patients a new digital way to compare the cost of medical procedures.

El Camino Hospital, a 443-bed hospital based in Mountain View, Calif., has rolled out a new price-estimator tool that allows patients to see the estimated out-of-pocket costs for about 80 procedures. They can also see which carriers cover those procedures.

Consumers want information to make good decisions about their healthcare.

The price estimator has simple descriptions of the procedures, and the projected out-of-pocket cost is a good faith estimate based on information available at the time of the query. However, the cost estimated by the web tool may differ from the patient’s final bill, the hospital says. So far about 1,500 consumers have used the new tool.

Patients who identify themselves as not having insurance receive an out-of-pocket cost estimate that reflects the hospital’s discounts for uninsured patients. They can also find contact information and service hours for scheduling staff, financial counselors and customer service.

Financial counselors can provide estimates for complex procedures via a follow-up phone call and insurance carriers accepted at El Camino Hospital are identified and updated regularly, the hospital says.  Patients can now use the cost-estimate tool to pay bills online such as co-payments and out-of-pocket costs.

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The cost calculator, which uses database services from Experian Information Services, provides cost estimates for MRIs, CT scans, CTAs (computed tomographic angiography), ultrasounds, X-rays, cardiac testing, mammographies, bone density testing and lab services among other procedures.

“Consumers want information to make good decisions about their healthcare,” says El Camino chief financial officer Iftikhar Hussain. “El Camino takes a personalized approach to care and our team has deployed an online tool to provide a customized cost estimate at the convenience of the user, 24 hours a day from their home or on the go.”

El Camino hospital has yet to say how many patients have used the new cost-estimator tool. The online cost-estimation feature is the latest in a series of digital healthcare technology upgrades at El Camino Hospital. In 2015 the hospital updated its patient portal when it went live with a new electronic health records system from Epic Systems Corp.

In 2011 El Camino, which has a network of 1,419 physicians and annual volume of about 18,600 inpatient visits, rolled out a service on its website designed to provide patients with up-to-date information about the current wait times at its emergency departments in Mountain View and Los Gatos. The times reported represent a four-hour rolling average and are updated every 10 minutes throughout the day.

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El Camino is also not the only hospital rolling out a cost estimator tool.

Headquartered in Naperville, Ill., Edward-Elmhurst operates three hospitals in Chicago’s western suburbs and goes head to head against much larger metropolitan health systems such as University of Chicago Medical Center, Northwestern Memorial Healthcare, Rush University Medical Center and others for patients and their business.

But to compete more effectively—and maintain and grow its market share among patients in the suburbs west and south of Chicago—Edward-Elmhurst began developing an aggressive digital healthcare program several years ago. It aimed to deliver self-service web tools for patients to better manage their health, wellness and business affairs and to offer more patient care programs such as telehealth and walk-in clinics.

Now Edward-Elmhurst, which operates Edward Hospital, Elmhurst Hospital and Linden Oaks Behavioral Health and more than 50 outpatient locations, is accelerating its digital and mobile efforts for patient care and to make it easier to use its health system, says president and CEO Mary Lou Mastro. In the past month Edward-Elmhurst has rolled out new digital tools for patients—an online costs comparison tool to check pricing on various procedures, and a new employee and patient satisfaction program that the system is using to make improvements to programs such as digital healthcare and plan what comes next.

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The initiatives are part of the health system’s consumer-driven health strategy, which emphasizes making healthcare convenient, accessible and transparent for patients and their families, Mastro says. “Hospitals have notoriously been behind on pricing transparency compared to other industries,” she says. “We owe it to our customers to take the mystery out of the process and provide this information so they can make more informed decisions for their healthcare.”

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