Maine’s Office of Affordable Health Care said the state must do more to limit the growing cost of healthcare.
During its annual hearing Wednesday, the office said that payments for outpatient hospital services in Maine increased by more than 40% between 2018 and 2024.
Senior analyst Katie Senechal said the largest categories that make up that spending are outpatient surgery, administered drugs and radiology.
“In outpatient surgery and administered drugs, those increases are really driven by price and not utilization,” Senechal said. “But that radiology space, we do see more utilization and only a modest increase in price.”
The executive director of the office, Meg Garratt-Reed, is concerned that prices at some Maine hospitals are among the highest in the nation, yet others are among the lowest.
According to data analyzed by the office, the price per inpatient stay at Maine Medical Center and Northern Light Eastern Maine Medical Center are more than $30,000, compared with the national median of just under $23,000.
Garratt-Reed said the primary driver of commercial hospital prices is market power.
“So large systems that come into negotiations with health insurance companies with a lot of leverage where the health insurance company really doesn’t have much of an option of walking away and, saying, ‘No thank you, we don’t want you in our network.’ That is where we see the highest prices generally being charged,” she said.
Garratt-Reed says hospitals with below average prices may find it difficult to sustain services.
This story appears through a media partnership with Maine Public.