The Daily News

As the patient financial service coordinator at St. Francis, I see how anxious the cost of medical care can make some people, especially when they face major procedures. At St. Francis, we strive to make our patients as comfortable and secure as possible. That’s why we applaud and lead efforts to be more transparent when it comes to health care costs.

Increased information about the quality of health care enables patients to become more informed and comfortable when making important health care decisions.

We want to communicate with our patients and their families in language they understand about hospital costs and their options. We proactively provide information about the cost of hospital care available to patients through “Understanding Hospital Prices,” a program that allows patients to gather cost information for hundreds of procedures, quickly and easily, by visiting our Web site or calling one of our financial counselors.

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On our Web site, patients can click on “Procedure Estimates” and follow the links to the procedure they are looking for. For example, a person who needs knee surgery would click on the “Bones/joints/muscles” category and they would find “Arthroscopy, knee, surgical” has a median cost of X dollars. We define median as the midpoint in a list of costs over one year’s time – half of all costs are higher and half are lower.

While the costs reflected in “Understanding Hospital Prices” do not take patients’ insurance coverage into consideration, we encourage them to contact our financial counselors to help determine insurance coverage and to provide a cost estimate based on individual insurance. Using an estimator tool, our financial counselors may provide patients with accurate estimates based on procedure costs and the patient’s insurance information. Our financial counselors can also explain insurance benefits and co-pay requirements, and provide assistance with applications for financial assistance. Our counselors strive to make patients feel comfortable about receiving health care, even if they don’t feel they have the ability to pay their bill.

We are working to make health care costs more transparent and help patients become better educated. For more information call, Ana Ehrens at 218-643-0312.

ANA EHRENS is the Patient Financial Service coordinator at St. Francis Healthcare Campus in Breckenridge.

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