OR Excellence price transparency panel speakers: Marty Makary, MD, MPH, Sanjay Prasad, MD, Vangie Dennis, BSN, RN, CNOR, and Andy Poole, MS.

Being charged something without being told the price? "Sort of like going to a supermarket and you only see the prices after they ring through the fruit," says Johns Hopkins surgeon and researcher Marty Makary, MD, MPH, at this morning's OR Excellence workshop, "Why and How to Post Your Prices Online."

And today's patients, especially younger ones and those with high-deductible plans, are no longer willing to consume health care in this matter, says Dr. Makary. "They want a fixed price," he says. "They want to know that the all-inclusive price for gallbladder surgery for is $6,000."

Dr. Makary predicts that posting prices online will "be the routine way of doing business" and recommends that surgical facilities get ahead of the curve. "Pricing is going to be absolutely transparent. Do you need to participate? Absolutely, yes. To be the leader, you want to be the first in your region to offer price transparency," says Dr. Makary. "This is going to be the hottest thing 5 years from now. Everybody will be doing price transparency at some point."

The ORX panel featured 2 surgical facility leaders who've posted their prices online. Vangie Dennis, BSN, RN, CNOR, says "volume started growing as soon as we posted our prices online," says Ms. Dennis, RN, the director of patient care practice at Emory Healthcare, who adds that volume at her surgery center surged from 200 to 600 cases per month soon after she posted prices online.

"It hasn't been Black Friday in terms of growth," says Andy Poole, MS, the CEO of the Monticello Community Surgery Center in Charlottesville, Va., "but volume is growing and we expect to attract more patients."

The keys to offering transparent pricing is to set reasonable charges for each procedure, including the fees for the surgeon, anesthesiologist and facility with healthy margins. Then you need to prominently post your prices on your facility's website so that patients can easily determine the price for surgery and schedule the procedure themselves. Both Ms. Dennis and Mr. Poole recommend letting patients move their cursor over a head-to-toe diagram of a patient, with each body part producing a dropdown menu of procedures and prices.

"Competition is what we need to make out healthcare system better overall," says Mr. Poole.

Dan O'Connor