Accuracy of Online Estimates: An Update

I previously wrote an article¹ in Modern Aesthetics® magazine on the accuracy of online estimates. We now have additional data to highlight the accuracy (or inaccuracy) of online quotes and how it may influence whether a patient books a procedure or not. But first, a little background.

Whether you’re generating leads through social media or your website, the goal is to nurture those leads from initial contact into a paying customer or patient. Over the years, we have studied how price transparency²—the idea that using a Price Estimator on your website³ to provide online estimates in exchange for the consumer’s contact info—can capture leads and educate the consumer in regard to the cost of a procedure to reduce sticker shock at the time of consultation, resulting in more scheduled procedures. But how accurate are those quotes? And more fundamentally, is price transparency beneficial?

BENEFITS OF PRICE TRANSPARENCY

In my practice, our belief is that a patient is more likely to book a procedure at the time of consultation if they’re aware of price ahead of time. Our results were published in a peer-reviewed journal.⁴ In that article, we found that 17.8 percent of leads through our price estimator came in for a consultation. Of those, 62.2 percent booked a procedure. As suspected, our study showed patients are more likely to book a procedure immediately—in fact 41% more likely if they are price-aware at the time of the consultation. Because we collected our data over the course of a year, we had the benefit of a longer “snapshot” in which to measure the booking rate.

Despite these benefits, there are concerns on the part of providers when it comes to online quotes. Those concerns include:

• patients will focus on price rather than physician expertise
• competitors would see a physician’s prices or
• estimates would be too inaccurate to be useful.

DR. TIM SAYED’S DATA

The focus here is the third concern. The perceived inaccuracy of online estimates stems from the conventional wisdom that consumers don’t have enough fundamental knowledge to choose the “right” procedure from a list and are therefore surprised or disappointed to find out the procedure they expected is different than the procedure their doctor recommends.

Our previous data on the accuracy of online quotes highlighted data from the practice of Dr. Tim Sayed⁶ in the San Diego/La Jolla area. Data from his practice were collected from May 1 through June 22, 2021.

Dr. Sayed’s price estimator generated 86 unique leads over the course of the study. Fourteen patients came in for a consultation, a lead-to-consultation rate of 16.28 percent, comparable to my experience of 17.8 percent above. Five of the 14 consultations (35.71 percent) booked surgery during the short timeframe of data collection.

The difference in cost between the patient’s estimated online quote and their actual procedure costs varied by 10.62 percent. In other words, for an $8,000 procedure, the difference was approximately $800. This cannot be considered a variation so great as to label online estimates too inaccurate to be helpful to the patient.

Figure 1. represents a screenshot from our quoting software⁷ dashboard showcasing data from my practice over the last 18 months. Going from left to right, each panel tells a story. First, our average discrepancy between the patient’s initial online estimate and their final quote after a formal consultation was 12.4%. Using a similar example as above, this would mean an $8,000 operation would be $992 higher or lower than the patient’s initial estimate.

Figure 1. Data from Pacific Heights Plastic Surgery

In the next panel, we see that if the final quote was higher than the initial estimate, the discrepancy was 30.6% higher. And if the final quote was lower, it was 15.1% below quotes that had no discrepancy (15.1%–––––0%–––––30.6% = 12.4%).

As expected, fewer patients booked if the final quote was higher than expected (59.5%) vs if the final quote was lower (79.2%). However, there was not a clinically significant difference in the odds of those patients booking.

In the last panel on the right, the odds ratio of 0.8 suggests that for every 10 patients who booked a procedure with a less expensive final quote, there were still 8 patients booking a procedure with a more expensive final quote.

CONCLUSION

Based on this data, the discrepancy, or inaccuracy of online estimates compared to final quotes is not so great as to be deemed worthless. In fact, allowing a patient to know costs ahead of time reduces sticker shock and increases the possibility they will book a procedure at the time of consultation. Moreover, even if the final quote is higher than the initial estimate, those patients are not deterred to a significant degree and still book surgery.

Being a patient advocate and thoroughly educating and informing a patient on the risks, benefits, and perioperative experience must also include information on the ultimate pain point from the patient’s perspective: the cost of the procedure.

1. https://modernaesthetics.com/articles/2021-july-aug/how-accurate-are-online-estimates?c4src=search:feed

2. https://modernaesthetics.com/articles/2016-sept-oct/consumers-believe-in-price-transparency-so-should-you

3. http://www.realdrbae.com/pricing

4. https://journals.lww.com/annalsplasticsurgery/pages/articleviewer.aspx?article=00023&issue=05003&type=Fulltext&year=2016

5. https://opmed.doximity.com/articles/price-transparency-and-sales-funnels-for-plastic-surgeons-3ebe9eb9-c072-4507-a91e-1bdfb0a4a199?_csrf_attempted=yes

6. https://www.timsayedmd.com/pricing/

7. https://www.buildmybod.com/physicians/

8. http://www.buildmybod.com/

9. https://www.newsweek.com/winning-victory-cost-transparency-health-care-opinion-1687849

10. https://modernaesthetics.com/search?q=Jonathan+kaplan

11. https://www.medicaleconomics.com/search?searchTerm=Jonathan%20kaplan

12. https://www.instagram.com/realdrbae/

13. https://www.snapchat.com/add/realdrbae

14. https://www.tiktok.com/@realdrbae?lang=en