Hospitals in Colorado can charge wildly different fees for the same procedure. A new tool offers patients some clarity

In The NoCo

Hospitals in Colorado can charge wildly different fees for the same procedure. A new tool offers patients some clarity

By In The NoCo,

Published October 30, 2024 at 5:30 AM MDT

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John Ingold is a healthcare reporter for The Colorado Sun. — John Ingold recently reported about new websites that could level out the market for hospital procedures in Colorado. Ingold is a healthcare reporter for The Colorado Sun and said that, "it becomes really difficult for us as consumers to actually apply our market pressure on hospitals," because the there is a lack of transparency.

Paying for a hospital visit often ends in a guessing game. For example, if you hurt your ankle and need an X-ray, you could pay a few hundred dollars 鈥� or nothing at all 鈥� depending on which hospital you go to and the deal they鈥檝e negotiated with your insurance company.

That fluctuation in pricing from hospital to hospital is true for many procedures in Colorado.

But some new websites might help consumers find answers. One of them 鈥� 鈥� was developed by a nonprofit to let patients look up price estimates for various procedures and find the best value.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis was so impressed he promoted the site in a press conference last week. He said it鈥檚 a first step to creating market pressure that will level out price differentiation.

is a health reporter for The Colorado Sun who has been He spoke with In the NoCo鈥檚 Brad Turner about the these websites and how they could help Coloradans.

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In The NoCo

KUNC's In The NoCo is a daily slice of stories, news, people and issues. It's a window to the communities along the Colorado Rocky Mountains. The show brings context and insight to the stories of the day, often elevating unheard voices in the process. And because life in Northern Colorado is a balance of work and play, we celebrate the lighter side of things here, too.

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Ariel Lavery

Ariel Lavery grew up in Louisville, Colorado and has returned to the Front Range after spending over 25 years moving around the country. She co-created the podcast Middle of Everywhere for WKMS, Murray State University鈥檚 NPR member station, and won Public Media Journalism awards in every season she produced for Middle of Everywhere. Her most recent series project is "The Burn Scar", published with The Modern West podcast. In it, she chronicles two years of her family鈥檚 financial and emotional struggle following the loss of her childhood home in the Marshall Fire.

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Brad Turner

Brad Turner is an executive producer in KUNC's newsroom. He manages the podcast team that makes In The NoCo, which also airs weekdays in Morning Edition and All Things Considered. His work as a podcaster and journalist has appeared on NPR's Weekend Edition, NPR Music, the PBS 暗黑爆料hour, Colorado Public Radio, MTV Online, the Denver Post, Boulder's Daily Camera, and the Longmont Times-Call.

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