Comparison Shopping

My friend had a cyst removed from the end of her right fourth finger. She told me that it’s healing well and she’s happy with the doctor’s work.

"Who removed it?" I asked her.

She gave me the name of a hand surgeon at a local teaching hospital.

"Did you compare alternatives for cost?" I asked her.

She had gotten another surgical opinion, but didn’t really understand my question about cost comparison. My friend is a retired attorney who knows me well enough to realize I’m not always totally serious.

I told her about the current thrust to make consumers (i.e., patients) more cost conscious by giving them "more skin in the game" (making it worth their while to get the best deal they can, as they would when, say, buying a flat-screen TV).

When I explained to my friend what I meant, she told me she wasn’t sure how well that would work. I told her that although I have skin in the skin game, I’m not so sure either.

Changes are in the wind. I got an e-mail the other day from a patient whose leg I had recently biopsied. I had told him that the result showed a fairly large basal cell and recommended excision, suggesting either of two surgeons.

His answer was: "Thanks. I will compare their costs and let you know which one I pick."

I responded that doing that would be fine, but might be complicated by the fact that one of the surgeons does Mohs, so to compare prices he would need to consult that doctor first and find out which technique he would use.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been put off by his e-mail, but I was. It seemed to imply that a professional recommendation is on the same plane as advice about picking a lawn mower. Is it? I was saying (or thought I was saying): "Here are two doctors whose work I know and trust." Reducing that to dollars and cents makes it something else, something less.

What it actually does is to reduce my professional opinion to shopping advice, which is in fact exactly what market-based incentives are supposed to do.

I thought of this push for cost consciousness a few months ago, when my wife had back surgery. We got several opinions: Laminectomy? Laminectomy with fusion? Even when surgeons at different hospitals recommended the same procedure, we did not ask what reimbursement rate the respective institution had negotiated with our insurer. (There are, of course, big differences, based not on quality – whatever that is – but on each hospital network’s market clout.)

The surgeon we picked arranged for several preoperative visits. At one of them the nurse said my wife would need a CT scan. We went right up one floor, and she had it done.

But should we have? There had already been an MRI. Was a CT scan really needed? And if it was, would we get the best price upstairs, or maybe across town?

Did my wife know? As a dermatologist, did I? Of course not. What would it have meant for us to say, "Hold on now, we’ve got skin in this game. We’d like to know why you need a CT scan. Is it really necessary? Is this the most cost-effective place to do it?"

Would that have been a shopping question, or a professional challenge? What would my friend’s hand surgeon have said if she asked him for a quote, or brought in one from another surgeon? Is buying surgery similar to bringing in a competitor’s coupon to Wal-Mart, or scanning a bookstore’s barcode on the Amazon app to see if they can match or beat it?

The powers shaping health care are not likely to be moved by such questions. They will point out – correctly – that medical costs are out of control, and therefore something must be done. They will therefore do something, as they are doing with electronic health records and will shortly do with ICD-10. The consequences of all these actions, intended and otherwise, remain to be seen both to doctors as providers and to all of us as consumers.

In the meantime, I have downloaded a discount coupon from the web: 10% off on any cystoscopy, but only if I act now and bring along 10 friends.

Let’s go, guys!

Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass. To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Rockoff at at [email protected].

My friend had a cyst removed from the end of her right fourth finger. She told me that it’s healing well and she’s happy with the doctor’s work.

"Who removed it?" I asked her.

She gave me the name of a hand surgeon at a local teaching hospital.

"Did you compare alternatives for cost?" I asked her.

She had gotten another surgical opinion, but didn’t really understand my question about cost comparison. My friend is a retired attorney who knows me well enough to realize I’m not always totally serious.

I told her about the current thrust to make consumers (i.e., patients) more cost conscious by giving them "more skin in the game" (making it worth their while to get the best deal they can, as they would when, say, buying a flat-screen TV).

When I explained to my friend what I meant, she told me she wasn’t sure how well that would work. I told her that although I have skin in the skin game, I’m not so sure either.

Changes are in the wind. I got an e-mail the other day from a patient whose leg I had recently biopsied. I had told him that the result showed a fairly large basal cell and recommended excision, suggesting either of two surgeons.

His answer was: "Thanks. I will compare their costs and let you know which one I pick."

I responded that doing that would be fine, but might be complicated by the fact that one of the surgeons does Mohs, so to compare prices he would need to consult that doctor first and find out which technique he would use.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been put off by his e-mail, but I was. It seemed to imply that a professional recommendation is on the same plane as advice about picking a lawn mower. Is it? I was saying (or thought I was saying): "Here are two doctors whose work I know and trust." Reducing that to dollars and cents makes it something else, something less.

What it actually does is to reduce my professional opinion to shopping advice, which is in fact exactly what market-based incentives are supposed to do.

I thought of this push for cost consciousness a few months ago, when my wife had back surgery. We got several opinions: Laminectomy? Laminectomy with fusion? Even when surgeons at different hospitals recommended the same procedure, we did not ask what reimbursement rate the respective institution had negotiated with our insurer. (There are, of course, big differences, based not on quality – whatever that is – but on each hospital network’s market clout.)

The surgeon we picked arranged for several preoperative visits. At one of them the nurse said my wife would need a CT scan. We went right up one floor, and she had it done.

But should we have? There had already been an MRI. Was a CT scan really needed? And if it was, would we get the best price upstairs, or maybe across town?

Did my wife know? As a dermatologist, did I? Of course not. What would it have meant for us to say, "Hold on now, we’ve got skin in this game. We’d like to know why you need a CT scan. Is it really necessary? Is this the most cost-effective place to do it?"

Would that have been a shopping question, or a professional challenge? What would my friend’s hand surgeon have said if she asked him for a quote, or brought in one from another surgeon? Is buying surgery similar to bringing in a competitor’s coupon to Wal-Mart, or scanning a bookstore’s barcode on the Amazon app to see if they can match or beat it?

The powers shaping health care are not likely to be moved by such questions. They will point out – correctly – that medical costs are out of control, and therefore something must be done. They will therefore do something, as they are doing with electronic health records and will shortly do with ICD-10. The consequences of all these actions, intended and otherwise, remain to be seen both to doctors as providers and to all of us as consumers.

In the meantime, I have downloaded a discount coupon from the web: 10% off on any cystoscopy, but only if I act now and bring along 10 friends.

Let’s go, guys!

Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass. To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Rockoff at at [email protected].

My friend had a cyst removed from the end of her right fourth finger. She told me that it’s healing well and she’s happy with the doctor’s work.

"Who removed it?" I asked her.

She gave me the name of a hand surgeon at a local teaching hospital.

"Did you compare alternatives for cost?" I asked her.

She had gotten another surgical opinion, but didn’t really understand my question about cost comparison. My friend is a retired attorney who knows me well enough to realize I’m not always totally serious.

I told her about the current thrust to make consumers (i.e., patients) more cost conscious by giving them "more skin in the game" (making it worth their while to get the best deal they can, as they would when, say, buying a flat-screen TV).

When I explained to my friend what I meant, she told me she wasn’t sure how well that would work. I told her that although I have skin in the skin game, I’m not so sure either.

Changes are in the wind. I got an e-mail the other day from a patient whose leg I had recently biopsied. I had told him that the result showed a fairly large basal cell and recommended excision, suggesting either of two surgeons.

His answer was: "Thanks. I will compare their costs and let you know which one I pick."

I responded that doing that would be fine, but might be complicated by the fact that one of the surgeons does Mohs, so to compare prices he would need to consult that doctor first and find out which technique he would use.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been put off by his e-mail, but I was. It seemed to imply that a professional recommendation is on the same plane as advice about picking a lawn mower. Is it? I was saying (or thought I was saying): "Here are two doctors whose work I know and trust." Reducing that to dollars and cents makes it something else, something less.

What it actually does is to reduce my professional opinion to shopping advice, which is in fact exactly what market-based incentives are supposed to do.

I thought of this push for cost consciousness a few months ago, when my wife had back surgery. We got several opinions: Laminectomy? Laminectomy with fusion? Even when surgeons at different hospitals recommended the same procedure, we did not ask what reimbursement rate the respective institution had negotiated with our insurer. (There are, of course, big differences, based not on quality – whatever that is – but on each hospital network’s market clout.)

The surgeon we picked arranged for several preoperative visits. At one of them the nurse said my wife would need a CT scan. We went right up one floor, and she had it done.

But should we have? There had already been an MRI. Was a CT scan really needed? And if it was, would we get the best price upstairs, or maybe across town?

Did my wife know? As a dermatologist, did I? Of course not. What would it have meant for us to say, "Hold on now, we’ve got skin in this game. We’d like to know why you need a CT scan. Is it really necessary? Is this the most cost-effective place to do it?"

Would that have been a shopping question, or a professional challenge? What would my friend’s hand surgeon have said if she asked him for a quote, or brought in one from another surgeon? Is buying surgery similar to bringing in a competitor’s coupon to Wal-Mart, or scanning a bookstore’s barcode on the Amazon app to see if they can match or beat it?

The powers shaping health care are not likely to be moved by such questions. They will point out – correctly – that medical costs are out of control, and therefore something must be done. They will therefore do something, as they are doing with electronic health records and will shortly do with ICD-10. The consequences of all these actions, intended and otherwise, remain to be seen both to doctors as providers and to all of us as consumers.

In the meantime, I have downloaded a discount coupon from the web: 10% off on any cystoscopy, but only if I act now and bring along 10 friends.

Let’s go, guys!

Dr. Rockoff practices dermatology in Brookline, Mass. To respond to this column, e-mail Dr. Rockoff at at [email protected].