Tag: Pricing

Are You Ready for Intense Price Competition?

Note from Brian: The article below describes my recent keynote address to a large meeting of imaging center administrators, and appears in the Sept 2012 Radiology Today. I’m reposting it because it accurately reflects, in depth, the message that I tried to deliver.

Remarkably, the audience was evenly divided in their evaluations. Half thought it was a very important but difficult to hear talk. The other half thought I was a jerk and it was the worst talk they’d ever heard. My take on this is that the responses reflected an industry that has become comfortable with a lack of accountability and market forces, and that is highly threatened by change.

Jim Knaub

Published in Radiology Today, September 2012, 13:8, p18

A keynote speaker told administrators to expect businesses threatened by ever-increasing healthcare costs with new approaches that will change how imaging organizations compete.

When Brian Klepper, PhD, delivered his keynote speech to the audience at the AHRA annual meeting in Kissimmee, Florida, last month, it was not the feel-good speech of the summer. Klepper, whose companies develop and manage worksite primary care clinics for employers and manage specialty care for those employees, told the audience that his company had recently negotiated a deal in Indiana for $450 MRI exams in a market that had technical fees ranging between $1,750 and $3,200. That was the opposite of a warm and fuzzy message to the 900 or so imaging administrators attending the meeting at the Gaylord Palms Resort and Convention Center.

“Somebody like me is going to come in to your market, and your volumes are going to plummet because there is no way you can compete against a $450 imaging price when you’re currently used to getting $2,800 or whatever you’re getting,” Klepper told the audience. “That is the problem.”

Continue reading “Are You Ready for Intense Price Competition?” →

So Cheap, I’ll Take Two!

Paul Levy

WBUR/CommonHealth reporter Rachel Zimmerman went shopping recently for a pelvic ultrasound.  She summarizes the results on a great new website called Healthcare Savvy.  Here’s an excerpt:

I called each facility, and here are the prices I was quoted for a pelvic ultrasound:

–Mass. General: $2847 or $2563 (more on this later)
–Mt. Auburn: $971.96
–Diagnostic Ultrasound Associates: $516

All three quotes were for the imaging only and did not include professional services or other additional costs, I was told.

So, is it just me, or is a five-fold difference in price for the same procedure at three greater Boston facilities kind of shocking?

I called MGH back to make sure I heard right. Weirdly, on Wednesday, the ultrasound price was $2,847, but on Thursday it was $2,563. (Do I hear $2,000?) I called the hospital’s PR office for a comment on why it costs so much more. Here’s the statement they sent me from Sally Mason Boemer, Senior Vice President of Finance: “MGH typically benchmarks our gross charges with like institutions and find our charge levels to be consistent with other urban medical centers that have a significant amount of complex care, teaching and research missions, and a high uncompensated care burden.”

Paul Levy is a former large hospital CEO and now, an advocate for patient-centered, efficient care. He writes at Not Running a Hospital.