COLUMBUS, OHIO — A bill sitting on Gov. Mike DeWine's desk would force hospitals to provide medical price transparency. The Ohio House and Senate just passed the bill that, if signed, would make Ohio the first state in the nation to have such a law.
There’s been a federal rule in place about putting prices online for patients to see, but Ohio could be taking that a step further by creating a law for upfront, complete, dollars-and-cents pricing for hundreds of medical procedures.
The bill makes the pricing free of charge without having to register or establish a user account or password. The bill states that the Director of the Ohio Department of Health will monitor each hospital’s compliance within 90 days of this becoming law and then update the list every 30 days.
For those patients who have been overcharged, like a woman from Norton, having upfront pricing could have saved her thousands on a recent surgery. “It would have been very beneficial for me,” said Tracey Owens. “I would have definitely shopped around had I known that (the surgery is) somewhere around $8,000 instead of $17,000.”
PatientRightsAdvocate.org Founder Cynthia Fisher says its study last month found only 13% of Ohio hospitals are fully compliant with federal rules.
“Prices empower people to be in charge of not only their health decisions but protect their wealth by being in control of their decisions of what they’re going to pay for their healthcare in advance of getting it,” said Fisher. “And when they get the bills, using those very exact prices to make sure they’re accurate.”
Fisher’s group is encouraging the governor to sign the bill.
The organization lists several Cleveland Clinic hospitals as not complying. The Clinic, in a statement, told us it is transparent.
We also reached out to University Hospitals, and it said, "University Hospitals has always been committed to price transparency and looks forward to continuing to do so within this new framework."
So far, MetroHealth has not gotten back to us with a reaction to the bill being passed.
We’ll monitor whether the governor signs the bill or not.
