If you have a health insurance deductible to satisfy, or if you are enrolled in a consumer driven healthcare plan, or if you have out-of-pocket costs that add up to more than $25/visit, I am sure you try to make the most of your health care dollars by finding low-cost providers that offer  the best value.  How do you find these low-cost providers?

Starting November 1^st, I am polling the community to find out how you search for health care prices.  I am interested in understanding how different consumers search for low-cost healthcare prices. What tools do you use to compare prices for health care services?  What “search terms” do you type in Google to find prices for health care services?

Let’s assume you visited your doctor and you need to have a non-emergency test or procedure performed.   How do you go about your search to compare prices for services like MRIs, x-rays, mammograms, vaccinations, lab tests, or a colonoscopy?  Do you ask your doctor for estimated prices?  Do you call the hospital or facility and ask for prices?  Do you ask your family, friends or neighbor to compare what they paid?  Do you call your health insurance hot-line for prices and recommendation on where to get the best value for this service?  Do you use Google to search?  If so, what search terms do you use? 

Send me an email to let me know what search terms you would use (or have used) to look-up and compare health care prices for specific services.   The first 1,000 people to respond will be entered in a drawing for a chance to win a $50 Amazon.com gift certificate.  Email entries will be accepted through November 30, 2008.

Here are the details to be included in the drawing for the $50 Amazon gift card.  Send an email to info@OutofPocket.com  and in your email message be sure to include:

(1)   What specific resources you would use (search engines, websites, online tools)

(2)   What search terms you would use to find prices for health care services

(3)   An email address where we can contact you, to notify you if you win the drawing

Good luck and thanks for sharing your search tips with us. 

If you are wondering what the true cost of an appendectomy is, keep reading....  Jaz-Michael King’s blog, A Scanner Brightly, provides the most thorough detail I have ever read on a patient’s charges for an appendectomy.  He wrote this blog earlier this year, and itemized the specific charges related to his appendectomy procedure.  A huge thank you to Jaz-Michael for sharing this detail with everyone to help us become better health care consumers.  I am glad everything turned out fine for Jaz-Michael and I would like to encourage him to keep up the great blog.  The data he shares is a wealth of information for consumers.

You definitely should read his blog entry, Hospital Bill: Appendix Ultimatum - it includes his comments and other useful information on the breakdown of costs for this procedure. 

Here are the itemized charges for an emergency appendectomy.

A virtual colonoscopy test can cost anywhere from $500 to $1,500, depending on where you go to have the test done. Another reason to consider a virtual colonoscopy test – it is half the cost of a standard colonoscopy. Before you make any decisions, make sure you check with your insurance plan to see if the virtual test is covered for routine cancer screening.

Wall Street Journal published a story on CT Scans and included some price comparisons at different facilities. If you have insurance or are paying cash, make sure you talk with the billing department before you have the test done, to understand your out-of-pocket costs for your specific situation.

Finding the best value for health care is not just about finding the lowest cost provider.  Value has everything to do with price and quality.  Today it’s very difficult for consumers to find useful and meaningful information on doctors.  To help you make informed health care choices, I’ve identified four online tools to help you do your homework ---before choosing a hospital or medical professional for your surgery, procedure or treatment.

Quality Check

This tool provides hospital performance reports with information by medical specialty. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) obtains information about accredited organizations not only through direct observations by its employees, but also through direct communications from those accredited organizations and from measurement companies hired by accredited organizations and accepted by The Joint Commission as sources for performance measure data. 

Hospital Compare

This Government online tool on the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services website provides information on how well hospitals care for patients with certain medical conditions or surgical procedures, and the results from a survey of patients about the quality of care patients received durin