New Yorkers in the market for an x-ray, colonoscopy or surgery have a new way to look up how much a medical procedure will cost them ahead of time.
Patients Rights Advocate, a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that aggregates public data on hospital prices, is set to launch a new price transparency tool today to help New Yorkers search the costs for a specific medical procedure based on the hospital where they receive care and how much their insurance will cover. The organization will launch the tool alongside the city’s Office of Healthcare Accountability, a government agency created in 2023 to ensure hospitals make their prices available as a way to drive down health care costs.
The tool, which aggregates publicly available data from hospitals across the five boroughs, aims to address a longstanding issue for patients: they often don’t know how much a procedure will cost them until after it happens.
The city’s new price transparency tool is the second of its kind that Patient Rights Advocate has launched alongside a local or state government. The organization built a similar tool in Colorado last year, becoming a model for municipalities seeking to reduce health costs.
Price transparency advocates say putting hospital charges out in the open is a key strategy to ensure that patients can shop around for the most affordable health care and increase competition.
“As long as hospitals and insurance companies hide their prices, they can charge whatever they want,” said Cynthia Fisher, founder and chair of Patient Rights Advocate. “Everybody needs to know prices before they get care.”
The tool may help save taxpayers’ money, too. A recent report from the Office of Healthcare Accountability shows that the city spent $11.5 billion on health care for roughly 1.2 million municipal workers, retirees and their dependents in 2024 – a figure that has steadily increased in recent years. The City Council estimates that its new health costs office could save as much as $2 billion annually by monitoring employee health spending and driving hospital prices down.
