patient was a small business owner with a high-deductible insurance
plan that would have forced him to pay $12,000 for the procedure. He
found us and was ecstatic to spend less than $3,000, all in.
The price transparency model is predicated on fairness in pricing. It
takes a certain amount of responsibility to show patients exactly what
you're charging. Are enough surgeons and facilities willing to do that
to make this model work across the country? I'm not sure, but I do
know patients shouldn't incur the charges of a 2,000% markup on a
pill, Band-Aid or device that a facility gets a discount on. That's not
where we want to make our money. We want to develop enough trust
with our patients and deliver outstanding care so they come to us
whenever they need surgery and send friends and family members
our way, too. We want to make money by providing excellent care
with fair pricing that will drive up our case volume, not by gouging
patients.
We began working on our program 16 months ago, and we're just
now starting to see the fruits of our labor. In January of this year,
approximately 10% of our cases were self-pay. Our goal is to get that
up to 50% or more, and we're moving steadily in that direction.
Ultimately, we didn't want to have a government agency mandate
price transparency. We wanted to show good faith to patients before
that happened, and set up the program on our own terms. Price trans-
parency is the future of health care, and we're positioned well ahead
of the curve, ready for future growth and success. OSM
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J U N E 2 0 1 5 | O U T P A T I E N TS U R G E R Y. N E T
Mr. Hadlock (jerry.hadlock13@gmail.com) is the director of anesthesia
at the St. George (Utah) Surgical Center.
