The Chicago Tribune reported some great tips on where consumers can find affordable dental care in the Chicago area and suburbs.
 
Here are four options for you to check out:

• Children's Dental Clinic, 2100 Ridge Ave., Evanston. Call the clinic at 847-866-2953.
• Cook County Department of Public Health Dental Clinic, Suite 250, 2121 E. Euclid Ave., Rolling Meadows, Illinois.  Patients must live in Cook County and meet income guidelines. The clinic, in the Rolling Meadows branch of Circuit Court, accepts patients by appointment. Call the clinic at 847-470-7398.
• Northwest Community Hospital, Mobile Dental Clinic, 800 W. Central Rd., Arlington Heights, Illinois. The clinic accepts Public Aid and Kid Care.  Fees are charged according to sliding scale. All patients must be screened before receiving treatment. Call the clinic at 847-618-5573.
• Waukegan-Belvidere Medical Clinic, 2400 Belvidere Rd., Waukegan, Illinois. The clinic offers dental care for ages 3 and older. Patients must reside in Lake County. It accepts Public Aid and Kid Care and charges fees on a sliding scale. Call the clinic at 847-360-6525.

If you know of other clinics that offer affordable dental, vision or medical services, please send us an email so we can share this information on our blog with other consumers.

Mona Lori
info@outofpocket.com

Many of you are struggling to make ends meet while your health care expenses continue to rise. If you are well informed and you do your homework, you might be able to reduce your medical expenses by following some simple tips. Just remember A-B-C-D.

Ask the provider upfront (before services are delivered) for a price break. Each provider has their own rules about negotiating bills, and you should always ask. Explain your circumstances and offer to pay cash at time of service or develop a payment plan.

Bill review. Be sure to review your medical bills for possible errors. I can’t tell you how many times I found small errors on my medical bills just by casually browsing through the detail. As soon as the bill arrives, read through all the line items and make sure that you are being charged the correct price and charged only for services you received. Medical billing errors occur all the time. Why pay more than you have to? I am assuming you already review many of your household bills (cell phone, utilities, cable, appliances, groceries, auto insurance) for accuracy. Treat your medical bills with the same level of scrutiny.

Compare prices using online tools. Insurers sometimes provide their members with tools to look up out-of-pocket costs for a specific plan. Other online tools are available to give you an idea of a fair or estimated price for a specific service. The more you know about fair pricing, the better price you will be able to negotiate. In addition to outofpocket.com be sure to check out healthcarebluebook.com, AMA CPT online, and costhelper.com to look up prices for services. For a more complete list of price tools, refer to the this list of price transparency tools. Remember also that where you go to receive care can also make a big difference in your costs. Emergency-room visits tend to cost $300 to $1000, compared with $150 at an urgent-care center, $65 to $75 at a doctor’s office, and $35 to $45 at a convenience-care clinic. For non-emergencies, it pays to call your insurer’s 24-hour advice hotline for guidance on where to go for care. Make sure the facility and provider are in your health plan’s network. In fact, don’t wait for an emergency to find the nearest ER or urgent care center in your network. Look it up now and keep this information handy so you can easily refer to it in case of an emergency, when it is often difficult to make cost effective decisions.

Discounts can make a big difference. You should make the most of discounts that are available to you from your insurer, dental/vision programs, prescription medications, and incentives from your employer. All these discounts help reduce your medical bills. Many insurers offer discounts on services to promote healthy lifestyles, including gym memberships, smoking-cessation and weight loss programs, chiropractic service and acupuncture. Ask your insurer or employer about these programs. Providers also offer discounts for paying in cash, or paying at time of service.

Consumers of health care services don't have a clear understanding of just how much medical services really cost.  For many years, health plans insulated members from the true cost of these services by making payments directly to doctors or hospitals. As a result, consumers received medical services for co-pays as low as $10, or some plans provided these services at no cost to the consumer. With the rise in consumer-driven health plans, it’s important for consumers to understand the true cost of medical services, and be knowledgeable about finding the best value before visiting a provider. Here are some interesting facts on what these services really cost.

Did you know:

• The national average cost of an MRI is nearly $2,000
• Heart bypass surgery costs about $57,000
• The average cost of a 30-day prescription of one name brand drug is $71 compared to $22 for the generic equivalent
• National healthcare expenditures are expected to nearly double over the next 10 years

Knowing what you're spending and keeping an eye on health care costs are important parts of keeping health care affordable for all of us. Here are some things we can all do to make a difference:

• Ask for FDA-approved generic drugs instead of more expensive name brands
• Make sure you're getting the right treatment, and always ask your doctor any questions you may have
• Review all explanation of benefits for accuracy, and ask about any costs that you don't recognize or understand.
• Understand what your out-of-pocket costs will be before you receive medical services. Online tools are available for consumers to look-up average prices if your insurer or provider cannot answer this question.

You’ve heard of the Kelly Blue Book, a trusted resource for looking up new and used car prices. Now there is a Blue Book of health care prices. A new website recently launched to help consumers look-up fair prices for health care services. The website, Healthcare Blue Book is an excellent resource to help consumers make informed choices. If you have ever wondered if you were being overcharged for health care services, or what a specific service might cost - this website can answer those questions. The health care Blue Book fair price is the cash price consumers should pay for a service or product at the time of treatment. It is the payment amount that many high quality health care providers accept from insurance companies as payment in full. Americans can’t control the economy, but they can do a much better job of educating themselves about what they should pay for health care.

Price variations for healthcare services, even within the same market and provider network, may be thousands of dollars. So knowing what the fair price is can help consumers better manage the cost of their health care. Unlike many other health care price tools, Healthcare Blue Book is very easy to use.  Type in the kind of healthcare service needed plus a zip code and the Healthcare Blue Book pulls up the fair price based on fees paid by Preferred Provider Organizations (PPO) to doctors for services in that market. Consumers can then use the suggested Healthcare Blue Book price to discuss prices for services and treatments with their doctors and other healthcare providers.

Americans do price/value comparisons for their homes, cars, vacations and the majority of goods and services they buy. “Why not healthcare?” asks Dr. Jeff Rice, Healthcarebluebook.com founder. The former CEO of CareSteps, Rice has a long history in the healthcare industry of developing innovative products for consumers.

“Patients should not assume that a high price means good quality,” says Rice. “It is up to patients to ask about the cost of services and to learn about the quality of their providers. Doctors and hospitals that charge a fair price, often provide the best value. Healthcarebluebook.com can help consumers figure out what they should pay.” Consumers need better education about the healthcare services they purchase and 2009 is a good year for them to start. Using the Healthcare Blue Book can help people learn how to obtain fair prices for their healthcare.

In addition to fair pricing, the website provides information on useful resources for patients including a list of websites by state that provide health care pricing.

Thank you for your interest in our community directory of health care prices --OutofPocket.com.  Over the past several months we have been fine-tuning the OutofPocket server and database to provide consumers with more meaningful price information.  At this time I would like to invite you back to take another look at www.Outofpocket.com.  The directory helps consumers look-up prices for routine health care services by utilizing a custom search engine that collects prices from consumers, providers, Government databases and public websites.
 
Can't find what you're looking for in the OutofPocket.com directory? 
 
We rely on consumers to post/share prices they paid for actual medical services, to share with other consumers.  We also invite providers to list their services/prices in the directory free of charge. The more prices that are added to the directory, the more meaningful the directory will become for everyone. Just imagine how interesting the directory would become if 500,000 consumers posted out-of-pocket prices they paid for actual health care services.
 
Do you have ideas on how we can improve this price transparency tool?   Have any tips to share with us?
 
Send me an email at mona.lori@outofpocket.com.  I'd love to hear from you.