"It's a mess sometimes": patient perspectives on provider responses to healthcare costs, and how informatics interventions can help support cost-sensitive care decisions.

Objective: We investigated patient experiences with medication- and test-related cost conversations with healthcare providers to identify their preferences for future informatics tools to facilitate cost-sensitive care decisions.

Materials And Methods: We conducted 18 semistructured interviews with diverse patients (ages 24-81) in a Midwestern health system in the United States. We identified themes through 2 rounds of qualitative coding.