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Hospitals in the U.S. now are required to post payer-specific prices for services, including cardiovascular tests and procedures. Researchers extracted data from pricing files at 20 top-ranked hospitals in the 2021 U.S. News & World Report rankings to compare both within-institution and between-institution prices for common cardiovascular tests.
The median negotiated price among all payers varied widely among institutions, with an echocardiogram ranging in price from US$204 to $2,588. Median prices for invasive procedures such as angiography ($2,868–$9,203) and percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI; $657–$25,521) also varied widely. Self-pay cash prices generally were higher than median negotiated rates but displayed similar variability. W…