Healthcare Provider Charges and Charge-Based Payment Systems ◾ 65
to reduce their charges. One of the delimiting factors is that many healthcare providers have
contracts by which they are paid a percentage of what is charged. If there were any wholesale
reduction in pricing, there would be an immediate decrease in reimbursement. us, particularly
hospitals and integrated delivery systems providers may decide to hold down on increasing prices
to eect some sort of orderly process of reducing prices.
Case Study 3.26: Reducing Prices at the Apex Medical Center
e Apex Medical Center has a payment contract for 90 percent of charges with a major insurance
company in its region. Apex would like to reduce its charges overall by 5 percent. It ha