Imaging costs were front and center in an investigative review of Sutter Health pricing practices conducted by Bloomberg News.
Imaging costs were front and center in an investigative review of Sutter Health pricing practices conducted by Bloomberg News.
The review, published online Aug. 19, explored how the nonprofit Sutter Healthcare system had become a dominant player in the markets it serves and, as a consequence, had the power to set prices that were often much higher than those charged by competitors.
Imaging costs were among the examples:
The article quoted insurance executives for Aetna, Health Net, and Blue Shield of California as saying Sutter can charge higher prices because it has acquired more than a third of the market in the San Francisco-to-Sacramento region through more than 20 hospital takeovers. The executives asked not to be named because their agreements with Sutter ban disclosure of prices, the article said.
Sutter’s chief executive officer Patrick Fry defended the network, saying Sutter Health doesn’t have market power, given the choices that employers can make.
Federal investigators in five states-Connecticut, Massachusetts, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New Hampshire-are probing proposed hospital takeovers or contracting practices for evidence of antitrust problems, Bloomberg reported. A Sutter spokesman said it knows of no federal or state antitrust investigations into its conduct.
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