Hospitalists' awareness of patient charges associated with inpatient care.

Abstract

Hospitalists' specialized focus on inpatient care services has been conjectured to offer increased efficiency and reduce costs of inpatient care. Hospitalists' estimates of the unadjusted patient-charges generated by commonly-used services were measured. Hospitalists' agreement with one another, and accuracy relative to the actual patient-charges were both low. Hospitalists' awareness of inpatient charges appears subject to the same opacity of pricing known to limit patient knowledge, and at present hospitalists' cognizance of charges and costs is unlikely to facilitate decreased care expenditures.