Price And Health Care Quality: Many Do not See Connection

Most consumers do not consider the adage that “you get what you pay for” in health care, in accordance to a new study.

The report in this month’s issue of the journal Health Affairs analyzed the responses of 2,010 adults to 4 queries about the relationship between health care costs and quality, like “Would you say higher costs are typically a symbol of better quality medical care or not?” and “If one doctor charged less than another doctor for the similar service, would you think that the less costly doctor is offering lower quality care or would you not think that?”

A majority of consumers - between 58 and 71%, relying on the query – did not link cost with quality, the study discovered.

For many consumer goods, price can be a good proxy for quality. But in health care, there is “limited evidence that higher costs are associated with higher quality or better health results,” in accordance to the study. The target of many attempts to get price and quality data to consumers is to nudge people toward choosing “high-value” care that offers them the most effective care for the money.

The data offers useful data for health care organizations that are trying to understand how people make choices and developing consumer tools, claimed the study’s lead author, Kathryn Phillips, a professor of health economics and health services research at the University of California, San Francisco. For instance, it suggests that offering prices to consumers does not necessarily encourage them to use the most expensive doctors or hospitals.