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"Cost accounting. Hospitals are terrible at it." Which is the more reasonable explanation? A hospital does not tell a patient the cost of an x-ray upfront bec
by rendall 8y ago
"Cost accounting.
Hospitals are terrible at it."
Which is the more reasonable explanation?
A hospital does not tell a patient the cost of an x-ray upfront because:
a) the hospital is terrible at accounting OR
b) the hospital makes a higher profit by withholding or obscuring that information until after the procedure.
- wswope 8y agoI work in a hospital radiology department, and the main part of my job is cost accounting. Getting estimates of cost for medical procedures is surprisingly difficult and expensive. It takes many people many hours of work to figure out how much a specific set of procedures costs. Bureaucracy also makes the job far harder than it should be, but "moving fast and breaking things" can lead to people dying, so it's understandable why hospitals don't tend to be innovative enterprises. There is value in it, but at the same time hospitals don't have much incentive to lower costs. My job probably only exists because medicare/medicaid bundled payment schemes are finally forcing hospitals to look at costs. Basically, it's both A and B.