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Rock Hill, S.C., Medical Center Continues Ads Comparing Hospital Prices

Posted on: Saturday, 8 October 2005, 00:00 CDT

By Julie Graham, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C.

Oct. 7--Piedmont Medical Center says it will continue running advertisements that compare hospital prices, even though competitors and the health care company that compiles the data say the numbers are misleading.

The newspaper ads, which have run in The Herald and the Fort Mill Times, cite data from a private managed care company showing Piedmont with lower prices than Carolinas HealthCare System and Presbyterian Hospital. Those hospitals are waging a hotly contested battle with Rock Hill-based PMC to build a hospital in the fast-growing Fort Mill area.

But officials from CHS and Presbyterian, both based in Charlotte, say comparisons are better made with the federal Medicare data that was recently released. That information shows Presbyterian with the lowest prices of the three while Piedmont was second, about $1,000 less per case than CHS.

MedCost, the privately managed care company owned by CHS that produced the data cited in the ads, calls the information "confidential and inappropriately released."

"Erroneous conclusions are being drawn, and we have already called Piedmont Medical Center on the misuse and confidential nature of the information," spokeswoman Sara Freetly said. "The data you're seeing has been inappropriately interpreted."

The Winston-Salem-based company uses the data in contract negotiations with hospitals that are "preferred providers" in its managed care network.

Freetly said the numbers were never meant to be compared.

The ads, using the MedCost data, have six treatment categories while the Medicare numbers are based on 29 categories.

Susan Ettner, an expert on health care economics at UCLA, said a privately owned company such as MedCost could not make all the adjustments in data to put small and large hospitals on a level playing field. She agreed with CHS that Medicare data is the fairest way to compare hospital costs.

For instance, large hospitals such as CHS get complicated -- and therefore costly -- surgical cases that community hospitals such as PMC are not equipped to handle, she said.

"Medicare has good data," Ettner said. "It's basically the closest thing we have to universal health care. It provides a nice comparison."

Charlie Miller, PMC's president and chief executive officer, said he has no reservations about comparing prices using the MedCost data.

"Somebody (at MedCost) goofed. They gave us information they wished they didn't," he said. "We stand by our ad 100 percent."

Miller said the comparisons in the ads are legitimate because PMC provides largely the same level of care as CHS.

While CHS and Presbyterian officials don't dispute the numbers, they argue that it's unfair to compare prices in certain areas, such as cardiovascular surgery.

"It's a joke to compare Piedmont Medical Center to Carolinas," said CHS spokesman Alan Taylor.

He said massive trauma patients are sent from PMC to his hospital, the leading heart hospital in the area.

"They send us their worst cases. They send us cases they can't handle," Taylor said. "The much more severe cases drive that cost up."

Presbyterian spokeswoman Kati Everett said her hospital does not use information from a private company like MedCost, co-owned by CHS and another hospital.

"We do not use it as an apples to apples comparison," said Everett, who said they rely on Medicare data.

The latest Medicare report showed improvement in PMC pricing. The hospital had a total average charge of about $28,972, ranking them fifth out of 10 similar hospitals in the region.

PMC is sandwiched between two competitors to build the second York County hospital. Presbyterian Hospital on average charged about $6,000 less than PMC, at $23,114, while Carolinas Medical Center was about $1,000 higher, or $29,896. The fourth company competing to build a new Fort Mill hospital, Hospital Partners of America, does not operate any of the 10 comparison hospitals.

State regulators are expected to decide next year which of the four will get to build the hospital.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Herald, Rock Hill, S.C.

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Source: The Herald

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