ArticleAnnals of surgical oncology2023
Variable Accessibility to Consumer Pricing Among Breast Cancer Operations.
Article in Annals of surgical oncology, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Price Transparency in the Management of Skull Base Tumors-The Price to Operate.Journal of neurological surgery. Part B, Skull base · 2025Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) mandate that every US hospital provide public online pricing information for services rendered. This allows patients to compare prices across hospital systems before establishing care. The goal of this project was to evaluate hospital compliance and patient-level accessibility to price transparency for common breast cancer surgical procedures.
methodsA sample case of a 62-year-old female with a T2N0 breast cancer was chosen. The patient would have the option of undergoing a partial mastectomy or mastectomy, both with sentinel lymph node biopsy (SLNB). Eight Massachusetts academic medical centers were evaluated. Searches were performed by authors for each hospital system and procedure using the sample case.
resultsEvery hospital had a cost calculator on its website. The average success rate of establishing a cost for partial mastectomy, mastectomy, and SLNB was 58, 35, and 25%, respectively. The median time to reach the cost calculator tool was 32 s (range 25-37 s). In successful attempts, the median pre-insurance estimated cost of a partial mastectomy was $16,509 (range $11,776-22,169), compared with $24,541 (range $16,921-25,543) for mastectomy and $12,342 (range $4034-20,644) for SLNB. SLNB costs varied significantly across hospitals (p = 0.025), but no statistically significant difference was observed for partial mastectomy or mastectomy.
conclusionDespite new regulatory requirements by CMS for increased price transparency for surgical procedures, our results demonstrate poor success rates in obtaining cost estimates and significant variability of reported hospital charges. Further efforts to improve the quality of hospital cost estimate calculators are necessary for informed decision-making for patients with breast cancer.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.