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player ready...Just in time for Christmas, Illinois shoppers are getting more comprehensive price information from the state about medical services at hospitals.
Whether it be a $4,752 outpatient knee arthroscopy or a $22,276 inpatient hip replacement, such price information from the Illinois Health Care Cost Containment Council should be the most consumer-friendly it has ever been in its recently revamped Hospital Price Survey Report.
In the past, the council’s information has been criticized for being inconsistent and out of date in the 15 years since state lawmakers mandated that the council provide price information about medical-care services at hospitals.
“The information was more random in the past, but the tenor and times have changed,” said Scott Hamilton, the council’s Consumer Affairs Health Care Advisor. “That’s not to say the past report was bad, but if (consumers) wanted something specific, they would have to hunt around for it. We wanted to bring more cohesion and order to the information and be objective.”
This year’s report–the first with statewide information since 1991–includes 1997 hospital prices from 220 Illinois hospitals. The report covers everything from the most common inpatient and outpatient medical-care procedures to the average price for a hospital room.
The information is available on the council’s Web site (www.state.il.us/agency/hcccc/) or by calling the council’s office in Springfield (217-786-7001) or Chicago (312-793-1440).
Still, industry analysts say the prices should be looked at with some skepticism because hospitals often complain they don’t get reimbursed for their entire charges by either managed-care companies or Medicare or Medicaid.
The council, however, said the state is simply offering an unbiased resource for consumers to give them an idea of what medical services cost at a time health-care costs are soaring.
“There’s a clamoring from consumers for this sort of information,” Hamilton said.
In the future, the 1997 data published this year will be used as a benchmark for releasing comparisons of hospital prices every year.
Furthermore, the council wants to provide price information from other health facilities in the future but needs legislative approval for that. The cost-containment council plans to ask the state legislature to mandate that ambulatory surgery centers provide price information.
Sound foundation? The Illinois attorney general’s office will review the sale of MacNeal Hospital in Berwyn to Nashville-based for-profit company Vanguard Health Systems before a state board can approve the transaction.
The attorney general wants to know specifically how much money will be used to create a foundation and how that new charitable trust will be set up once the hospital is sold to Vanguard, said Floyd Perkins, a lawyer with the attorney general’s charitable trusts division.
Current plans call for about $150 million of the $210 million in sale proceeds used to create a foundation to service community health projects, said Ed Webb, an attorney representing MacNeal in the transaction.
Once Perkins completes the review, the hospital’s sale will be decided at a January meeting of the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board.
Mail bag: In their zeal to get state approvals for expanding and upgrading health facilities and thus save more patients’ lives, hospital administrators may be killing some trees in the process.
The Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board wants health-care firms to cut down on the number of endorsement letters hospitals are submitting with their projects. Hospitals and other health-care firms submit such correspondence from their respective communities to bolster their applications for major expansions or equipment purchases.
But board member Thomas Beck of Chicago said he believes most letters are repetitive and only add to the size of applications that typically are several times the size of most Chicago telephone books.
“It’s often the same letter with a different name,” Beck said. “I, for one, don’t like the quantity, but the quality (of the letter).”
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Contact Bruce Japsen at [email protected].
MORE ON THE INTERNET: Read previous “Inside Health Care” columns at chicagotribune.com/go/insider