You can determine the cost of a car or house before going to look at it, so why is it so difficult to figure out the cost of a medical procedure before going to see the doctor or more importantly, before getting the bill? Healthcare pricing is difficult because insurance companies have different rates with different doctors or facilities and after the insurance company pays their part, or not, the patient gets the bill. Well that’s changing now.
With over 36% of consumers that have high deductible health plans, more and more of the costs of healthcare are resting on the consumers’ shoulders. So for this reason, patients want to know how much it’s gonna cost ahead of time to make better financial decisions. If a patient knows they haven’t met their deductible, which means they’re still paying out of pocket, they might as well get their blood test or X-ray done at a place offering those services at a lower price. You’re not cutting on quality, just cost.
For this reason, more and more healthcare providers are adding cost estimators into their websites. This way, the consumer can check cost before coming in, and in exchange for getting pricing information, the consumer gives up their contact info to the provider who can call and assist the consumer in navigating their care. And this isn’t just our opinion, we can prove that consumers want this pricing information.
For example, if you look at some of the analytics of having pricing on your website, you learn a lot about human behavior and what they want. When a provider has healthcare pricing on his/her website, consumers are almost twice as likely to stay and browse the rest of the website. Only 36% leave the site after checking the pricing page as compared to 61% leaving the site when they start out on a page other than the pricing page.
With a pricing page, the consumer is likely to stay on the site for twice as long – 3.43 minutes vs 1.63 minutes. And lastly, once they’re on the pricing page, the consumer browses 33% more pages across the site than without a pricing page.
Hope that wasn’t too technical and drives home the point that consumers want price transparency and as providers, we should give it to ’em!
To check pricing from a healthcare provider near you, click here.
