The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration (Agency) launched Florida Health Price Finder, a new healthcare transparency tool for consumers. The new website allows consumers and caregivers to look up the average amounts paid by Florida insurance plans for a specific service, giving them a better estimate of their total out-of-pocket expenses. The service bundle information is a non-personalized estimate of costs that may be incurred by the patient for anticipated services and actual costs will be based on services actually provided to the patient. The average amounts paid by insurance plans are based on billions of lines of claims data from three Florida health plans. Claims data from additional health plans are expected to be added to the database in 2018.
The website lists the services as “care bundles”. A care bundle includes the steps and procedures that are part of a typical treatment plan for that specific care bundle. For example, the care bundle for Knee Replacement includes an office visit with a specialist, surgery, outpatient physical therapy/rehabilitation and follow-up visits.
Since 2007, Floridians have been able to use FloridaHealthFinder.gov to look up undiscounted hospital charges, however, this is rarely the amount that individuals or insurance companies are expected to pay. Now, with this new tool, and in conjunction with working with their respective insurance plans, Floridians have the opportunity to get a much better estimate of out-of-pocket costs for specific services.