Estimating medical bills fosters anxiety and confusion for most people. Thanks to a new law, there should be fewer surprise bills, but there will likely still be confusion.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services now requires hospitals to post prices for stays, procedures, services, drugs and supplies. Despite being introduced in the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the federal mandate didn’t go into effect until Jan. 1.

Both The Medical Center and Tristar Greenview Regional Health are complying with the law.

“In accordance with the new federal requirement, we are posting our entire charge master,” said Ron Sowell, Med Center Health executive vice president and chief financial officer.

“We have been focused on pricing transparency for many years, because we believe it’s important for patients to be able to make informed choices about their health care and understand their financial obligations,” said Andria McGregor, the marketing and communications specialist at Greenview. She said the hospital began posting information about pricing estimates in 2007.

For The Medical Center, patients can review the prices at themedicalcenter.org.

At the bottom of the page, there is a link to “Hospital Standard Charges,” which then links users to an Excel spreadsheet.

For TriStar, patients should visit tristargreenviewregional.com.

Under “Patients and Visitors,” there is a link to “Pricing Information.” There, patients should click “Pricing Estimates and Information, and then follow a few links to the “detailed price list.”

In some cases, finding a particular procedure or service can be challenging.

At The Medical Center, a newborn hearing test in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit costs $80, and the implantation of the pulmonary pressure monitoring device called CardioMEMS costs $53,200. But if someone is getting a suture, they would have to navigate a list of several dozen different “sutures.”

Procedure prices differ between hospitals, too, as the hospitals negotiate individual contracts with insurance carriers. At Greenview, the same CardioMEMS procedure costs $43,750.

But that’s probably not how much patients are going to pay, anyway.

“Quite frankly, the amount of out-of-pocket costs a patient is going to be obligated to pay is primarily going to be based on their individual insurance,” Sowell said.

For patients without insurance, the hospital automatically applies a self-pay discount to hospital charges. “No one pays completely out of pocket.”

At Greenview, the hospital warns patients online that the “final bill for services rendered at TriStar Greenview may differ substantially from the information provided by this website,” and recommends that patients call 800-370-1983 for a more accurate estimate. For the uninsured and underinsured, Greenview recently expanded its discount services and even free care (for certain uninsured individuals) to help more patients, according to McGregor.

To inquire about charges at The Medical Center, Sowell recommends contacting the business office at 270-745-1100, or contacting insurance companies directly, as they will know where a patient is with her or his deductible and will know each hospital’s price.

“Many patients come to the hospital with the security that they have insurance, only to find that their particular plan has a very high deductible,” Sowell said. “We will work with patients to help them understand what a particular cost of a procedure might be for them,” including how to understand copays and deductibles.

There are other variables to the final bill, such as how much time the surgeon will take in the operating room or how much time it takes for a patient to recover in the hospital – as well as drug and supply usage. A person’s age is typically a factor.

“No one procedure has the same charge and cost, it varies from patient to patient,” Sowell said.

Though still potentially confusing, the hospital executives believe the government’s decision is a good step toward transparency, and suggested the hospitals will take further initiatives to promote transparency without federal motivation.

“We want to work with every patient that we can to make sure it’s affordable,” Sowell said. “I think the health care industry, as providers and insurance companies, have really stepped up their game in recent years to provide more information to the public. But the value of transparency is only as great as the public makes out of it.”