What Will Hospital Websites of the Future Look Like?

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The ideal hospital website will eventually provide price transparency and cater to the financial and immediate clinical needs of patients, according to Leah Binder, president and CEO of the Leapfrog Group.

Today’s consumers have new expectations about price and value, and hospitals must respond, Binder wrote in the Wall Street Journal. The website should include a menu of options that fetures bundled prices for procedures and treatments so they are meaningful to consumers, she said. This may mean hosptials provide “limited-time offers” for medical services and provide “extended warranties.”

“Suddenly a real customer is emerging in healthcare: a patient who is price shopping and asking what kind of value they get for their dollar,” Binder wrote. “Even though they will rarely need to pay their whole hospital bill, they have a new set of expectations, and it is changing everything. Together, these patients are turning into a market, and that market will demand health systems move into the 21st century.”

Although state governments have made some efforts to achieve price transparency, most are fragmented. And there are also questions as to whether consumers will actually use the price information states and organizations provide to them.

But Binder suggests that hospitals create websites that allow more patient interactions. Along with the pricing data, she said hospital websites could allow patients to access their medical records through a fingerprint scan, access meaningful quality data, and obtain an instant videoconference with a physician, pharmacist, or nurse. There must also be a way for patients to post interactive feedback about their experience, she added.