Findings from HCFO-Funded Work on Price Transparency Tool Featured by Several Media Outlets

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As consumers are encouraged to make value-based decisions, the need for transparency in health care prices is essential. However, there is little evidence as to how patients use health care price transparency tools. In a HCFO-funded study, Anna Sinaiko, Harvard University, and colleagues examined Aetna’s web-based cost estimator tool and found that users of the tool were younger, healthier, and more likely than non-users to have higher deductible spending. The findings suggest that raising awareness of the tool or proactively delivering price information to patients, particularly older and sicker patients, could increase the potential impact of the tool on consumer behavior. The findings were published in Health Affairs, and her work was recently featured in WTOP, Science 2.0, UPI, 90.9 WBUR, Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, and Healthcare Financial Management Association.