The HLC believes, that in contrast with prevailing practice by the industry, members deserve to know the appropriate price of the services they are seeking before they actually access the medical system.  As adults, all understand that a particular diagnosis may be different and more complex but we also know that there is a median and "bell curve" range for most services.

During 2007 and 2008, the Transparency Committee approached a number of organizations for their current prices but with little proactive cooperation.  Ultimately, St. Mary's Hospital and Bellin, along with coding experts from NWTC assissted in developing an extensive list of the most frequently used services, including pricing for lab tests used for diagnostics, clinic costs, and costs for out-patient and inpatient services.  St. Mary's Hospital, St. Vincent Hospital and Bellin Hospital and Clinic, cooperated in providing the requested data for our HLC members.  These prices are included herein, as are the prices for MRI services provided by NEW MRI, the leading local independent.  The Aurora Hospital, as well as all physician groups declined to participate.  We are hopeful that they will participate in the future.

In addition, when Humana became our insurance provider on January 1, 2009, members gained access to Humana's sophisticated price tracking tools within their website.  Median costs and ranges, and in some cases, quality ratings are included for a long list of services. We have summarized this information and made it available to our membership, but the information must be interpreted with care.  The special usefullness of these ranges is that they include virtually all costs, hospital, physician, anesthesiologist, and labs for a specific medical service.

The difficulty in obtaining prices is the result of the competitive marketplace (providers make discount pricing deals with various organizations like insurors that provide them customers), as well as an understanding that you can price higher when the marketplace isn't aware of your prices.  It is incumbent on us to break through this "opaqueness" and create "transparency," which will create a leavening of prices as in any other marketplace.

The HLC is anxious that all pricing lists and explanations are made available not only to employees at the workplace, but to their homes as well.  When members have an idea of what prices are, they are more likely to ask about what is included in that cost.  This allows them to become better consumers, an important HLC objective.