May. 14, 2009 at 4:44pm

Rx from a recessionista

Posted by Guest Blogger in Community Relations, Planning and Strategy
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“I'm not home, but my shoes are. Leave them a message.” Beep.

So goes the greeting on the answering machine of one Carrie Bradshaw, the shopaholic protagonist on TV’s “Sex and the City.” Like Carrie, I love shoes. Unlike her, I’m into bargains. And I’m talking more than shoes—clothing, groceries, appliances, you name it. But there’s one notable exception: Health care.

Navigating clearance sales? Easy. Selecting insurance plans and buying prescriptions? Forget it.

Recently I was prescribed a topical treatment for a skin condition. Noting my sticker shock, the pharmacist looked at the label. “Some pharma rep must’ve gotten to them,” she said. “We’ve been dispensing lots of this. It’s so expensive!”

Maybe that was the case, maybe not. I’ll give my dermatologist the benefit of the doubt here and assume she prescribed what she believed was the best course of treatment. But she also prescribed an incredibly expensive antibiotic, which I skipped in the hopes that the cream would be sufficient. I was right.

My point? We have options. In an ideal world, the conversation with my doc might have gone something like this:

“Looks like a mild case of dermatitis—this antibiotic and topical cream should take care of it. If they’re too expensive, depending on your insurance coverage, you could try this other antibiotic with an over-the-counter corticosteroid for 4-6 weeks. If there’s no improvement, then you should switch back to plan A. I’ll go ahead and write them up for you and you can decide.”

Consumers are responsible, too
I don’t expect every physician to forgo what she thinks is the best treatment plan just to save the patient a few bucks. For starters, it could backfire. If I’d tried a cheap way to treat my dermatitis that didn’t work, you bet I’d be back for the expensive stuff.

Point number two: If it’s options we want, we need to ask. Looking at my scenario again, I had at least two opportunities to do this:

• With scripts in hand, I could have asked my pharmacist to check my out-of-pocket costs. At that point I certainly could have called my dermatologist’s office to ask about alternatives.
• Even better, I could have talked about alternatives while in my dermatologist’s office. That way I’d be prepared just in case the “plan A” was cost-prohibitive for me.

Savvy shoppers use money-saving techniques like these all the time. But if your doctor wants to order an MRI for a nagging pain in your knee, for example, how many of us would be so bold as to ask questions, such as “Can I try PT first? Are there exercises I can do to see if that helps?”

Third party payers partly to blame
Why is it difficult to be a savvy health care shopper? Insurance providers are part of the problem. It’s fair to say that most have a long way to go toward simplifying information for their customers. But that’s a topic for another blog post.

You can help, too
So where does your hospital, health system or practice come in? Here are a few ideas:

• Options. Encourage your employees to think like consumers and offer alternatives when possible, explaining the pros and cons of each. Whether insured, underinsured or uninsured, most of us like to know our options for procedures, prescriptions or other treatments.

• Pricing. It’s true that many private practice physicians wouldn’t be able to tell you the cost of an office visit because it’s different for every plan. But it might make sense to publish private pay costs for the basics, such as an office visit, a physical, immunizations, etc. That’s helpful for the uninsured, underinsured or anyone comparing individual health insurance plans.

• Don’t forget the tips. Include money-saving tips in your Web site and newsletters. This holds true for your resources and seminars that focus on a particular health problem, such as diabetes. Can you include options, price ranges? Do you know which treatments are typically covered?

I’m sure that eventually it will get easier to be a savvy shopper when it comes to health care. New tools and resources are likely to emerge, such as Carol.com, to help us find and compare costs.

Until then, you’ll find me nosing around the clearance racks.

Lori Briggs is an advisor at JayRay Ads & PR

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