People looking for health care coverage aren’t using price transparency tools to shop around for cheaper providers. Instead, says a new study, they use them to plan for out-of-pocket expenses.

The Accenture study, reports Modern Healthcare, gives the lie to the claim that consumers will shop around for the cheapest providers if they know the price before obtaining care. Instead, it finds that 46 percent check out pricing to be able to set aside money to meet out-of-pocket expenses; only 11 percent do it to compare prices.

The study also finds that about 60 percent of health care consumers said they’d go to their provider of choice even if they know how much it will cost before they actually get care.

“This study really revealed for providers that the majority of patients are going to go ahead with the service and just want the information,” Jean-Pierre Stephan, managing director of Accenture, says in the report. Stephan adds, “This is how we in the industry need to think about price transparency, instead of assuming this pricing information is going to result in shopping like other industries, this starts to give an indication that there are other drivers from a consumer perspective.”

Stephan adds that instead of price shopping, consumers choose health care providers based on other factors: convenient locations, in-network service and referrals from their primary care doctors, family or friends.

But depending on the health care provider, consumers may be more or less loyal. About 40 percent of respondents said they’d look for cheaper dental care, while 35 percent would do so for vision care. When it comes to chronic conditions, just 15 percent said they’d choose based on cost, and only 13 percent would price shop for a surgical procedure.

That doesn’t mean they aren’t worried about the cost of care; about 33 percent of those insured under employer-sponsored health plans said they were concerned about affordability, compared with 61 percent of uninsured respondents. And the rise of high-deductible health plans and cost-sharing is driving more consumers to find out the bad news in advance; approximately 91 percent said they want to know their out-of-pocket costs before services.

But providers aren’t helping all that much, whether patients are insured or not; of the 49 percent of consumers who knew their out-of-pocket costs, only 25 percent got the information from their provider.

Instant Insights /

Consumers using price transparency to budget, not comparison shop

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