At first glance, the new U.S. Department of Health and Human Services rule that requires hospitals to post their prices seems like a dream come true for patients. Frustrations with high prices, unclear communication, and surprise bills have led to a higher demand for price transparency in U.S. health care. The listing of service prices could encourage patients to shop for lower costs and possibly influence decreases in price growth.

Unfortunately, these news rules may just add more complications, according to an article in Annals of Internal Medicine by Director of the Partnered Evidence-based Policy Resource Center at the Boston VA Healthcare System Austin Frakt, PhD and associate professor of health care policy Ateev Mehrotra, MD, MBA. While hospitals will list service prices, patients will have no way of knowing how many bandages or scans will end up on their bill. They may find low priced procedures and materials from varying hospitals but will not be able to combine them. Furthermore, the rules do not require hospitals to provide what the out-of-pocket expenses will be after everything runs through a patient’s insurance.

Providing out-of-pocket costs may not be enough to make patients take advantage of price transparency, Frakt and Mehrotra say. Even with these costs listed, price transparency does not include any information on quality. A patient may get a good deal but be at risk of receiving poor quality care. Patients may not be able to decipher all of the information provided to them due to Current Procedural Terminology and medical jargon. Most trust their physicians and would not want to go against their recommendations even if it would save them money.

Frakt and Mehrotra offer two suggestions for progressing with price transparency: simplify and communicate. If patients are provided with a more straightforward way to choose their providers they may be more apt to select lower prices. Alternatively, providers could communicate the pricing to their patients instead of patients having to consult an external website.

Changing the way Medicare pays physicians by bundling physician and facility fees and moving to site-neutral payments could make price comparisons easier. If the federal government made these changes, it would serve as a model that private insurers would hopefully follow.

Although price transparency seems beneficial at first glance, it requires large adjustments before it can prove itself useful in lowering patient out-of-pocket costs.