Hospital cost bill gets the OK

Assemblyman Dario Frommer hopes a bill he introduced will help

consumers compare what hospitals charge for common procedures. But

observers believe comparing prices between hospitals is like the

proverbial comparison of apples to oranges.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Assembly Bill 1045 into law

Wednesday. The bill requires hospitals to make the itemized lists

available to the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development

for posting on its website.

“It amazed me that if you get your car fixed you get an estimate

but if you have major surgery you have no idea what it will cost,”

said Frommer, a Democrat whose district includes Glendale and

Burbank.

The inability to pay medical bills is the top reason for personal

bankruptcy in the country, Frommer said.

California is the fourth state to adopt such legislation and the

second to include it on a state-sanctioned website, said Frommer, who

is a member of the Assembly Health Committee.

In response to a similar Frommer bill passed in 2003, Glendale

Adventist Medical Center makes copies of “chargemasters” of the 25

most-common in-patient and 25 most-common out-patient procedures

available to the public on request, spokeswoman Alicia Gonzalez said.

A chargemaster is the itemized list of costs a patient incurred,

or will incur, for a procedure.

“It won’t affect us because we’re already doing it,” Gonzalez

said. “It’s good for the consumer to be informed.”

Ward Quon, spokesman for the 430-bed Providence St. Joseph Medical

Center in Burbank, agreed with Gonzalez.

“It really doesn’t affect us because any legislative requirement

we are in support of,” Quon said. “There is no cost incurred because

some of this information we have or maintain already.”

Still, it might be an unwieldy task for consumers to handle.

“You are definitely comparing oranges to apples to pineapples to

kiwi fruit,” said Fred Harder, spokesman for California Hospital

Assn., a professional association that advocates for almost all of

California’s 450 hospitals. “There are a lot of good reasons why

costs and charges are different from hospital to hospital. They

aren’t trying to hide something. They are just different.”

The association worked with Frommer to amend the original wording

of the bill before it was passed into law, Harder said.

But Frommer never meant the cost of health care to be the lone

yardstick for determining the value or quality of health care at a

hospital, he said.

“We are not casting any judgment on the quality of care based on

cost alone,” Frommer said. “That I hope will come later when we get

to the second part of this plan when we do a quality rating.”

Wisconsin has a system that lists costs for common procedures as

well as a quality rating so consumers have a better feel for value,

Frommer said.

“My goal is to have, in essence, a grading program,” he said. “But

we have to get all hospitals to agree on what those guidelines are

and that is being worked on. So when that report card comes together

with costs we can add it in.”

Hospitals incur different costs due to a myriad of reasons,

including location and whether they are teaching hospitals,

children’s hospitals or community hospitals, Harder said.

“Our determination is that it wasn’t going to be helpful for

consumers but it wasn’t going to hurt them either,” Harder said.

“Frommer did work with us and removed some of the items we couldn’t

live with and we always follow the law.”