WHRO: Hampton Roads hospitals post prices, but some rates remain hard to figure out

Summary

Jennifer Mellor, professor of economics, was quoted in this article about a new report on Hampton Roads hospitals and federal hospital price transparency rules.

Full Description

"Jennifer Mellor, a professor of economics focusing on health from William & Mary, said another challenge is whether patients can realistically use the pricing information hospitals publish.

'A lot of consumers are probably not going to be downloading the machine-readable files where those algorithms appear,' Mellor said.

Patients may instead turn to hospitals’ online price estimators. But Mellor said they still have to find the tool, know which procedure to search for and identify their insurance plan consistently across different hospital websites."

Read full article at whro.org.