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Outpatient surgery prices available by ’07

Ambulatory Surgery Reimbursement Update, June 21, 2005

Under a new law signed last week, patients in Illinois will be able to view on the Internet the cost of outpatient procedures beginning in January 2007, according to the Chicago Tribune.

The Illinois Health Care Consumer's Right-to-Know bill (House Bill 2343) will require surgery centers and hospitals to report to the state the cost of the procedures, as well as their success rates in performing them.

"Right now, people don't have any information on which to go. Most of it is word of mouth," said Rep. Julie Hamos (D-Evanston), according to the Tribune. "This will allow consumers, the patients, to make comparative judgments about the quality and cost of their health care providers. It will give people a lot of information they don't currently have."

The new law comes about following the passage of laws requiring hospitals to provide information about their performance, and the publishing of the cost of inpatient procedures on the Illinois Department of Public Health Web site before January 2006.

The new law will post information not only from the hospitals, but the 126 licensed outpatient surgery centers in the state. The state plans to report the average charges for 30 outpatient procedures, according to the Tribune.

For more information on the law, click here.

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