Kirkland based EvergreenHealth hospital has recently introduced a new program to help patients determine their out-of-pocket costs for medical procedures.

Designed to help patients considering various options and provide stronger healthcare transparency, hospital officials have said the program has received positive feedback from patients who have used it since they first started using it in December.

“Just in the few months that we’ve been offering this service to our patients, we’ve been pleased by both the volume of inquiries by our patients, and by the positive impact it has on their care,” said EvergreenHealth CEO Bob Malte in a release. “We’ve had patients tell us that amid the tumult associated with any medical procedure, having clarity around cost relieves them of the stress that many patients experience.”

They also say their estimates, so far, have matched that of actual out-of-pocket expenses patients end up paying.

Chrissy Yamada, EvergreenHealth’s chief financial officer, said the program is part of an overall trend for healthcare systems providing greater transparency for patients in order to avoid unnecessary or unexpected costs. One of those areas is out-of-pocket expenses, which is what a patient pays directly for procedures.

“This is all in the spirit of trying to be transparent for health care costs and how much patients have to pay,” she said. “We started to think about how we could do it more transparently with a tool that provides actual out-of-pocket [costs], not what we charge.”

Yamada said that whereas before the hospital would have to have determine the costs manually, the program takes care of the calculations for a procedure using the patient’s insurance information, their to-date coinsurance and deductible, as well as the hospital costs of the procedure, to determine what the patient will pay themselves. Though it is an estimate and does not account for unknown changes, such as complications before, during, or after the procedure, Yamada said it allows patients to be more aware when they make medical decisions.

“If everything goes according to how it should, then the estimate is quite accurate,” she said.

One example of this, Yamada said, was when a patient was inquiring about the cost of a radiology service at the hospital. The program was able to determine the costs and compared it to one of the hospital’s joint ventures, which offered the same service for a much lower price. In the end, the patient saved several hundred dollars in out-of-pocket expenses, Yamada said.

“We hope consumers will become more informed and asking questions,” she said. “We think our tools are very, very unique and the first in the Puget Sound area. We think it’s empowering to patients when they know how much it’s going to cost.”

Patients can obtain quotes by visiting www.evergreenhealth.com/estimate or by calling 425-899-3632.