As if yet another reason might be needed, there’s more than trouble in River City when paying customers have to deal directly with the cartelized medical industry. It’s really a matter of incentives, knowing who calls the tune. And it’s definitely not the customer.

Having good, accurate and up to date health information has to be a good thing for all concerned; not least for the health provider to make sure that their recommendations are actually helpful. But it’s all for naught if the information isn’t used. Providers can easily ignore this when enforcing their own we only service what we sell policies to increase revenue. Requiring duplicate tests are more than a waste of money; they broadcast an amazing disregard for free markets.

Fortunate in having good health, and a form believer of actively maintaining it long before John Mackey, Whole Foods Market Inc’s CEO, got lambasted for writing about taking personal responsibility for one’s own health, I track an annual blood panel done through a local clinic. These annual visits, which seldom take more than ten minutes ‘production’ time, are, fortunately, my only personal contact with the health industry. Accordingly, I pay for these directly rather than go through an insurance company, even one with a very high deductable. It really pays to pay directly; the cash discount is nothing to sneeze at, and doing so saves the clinic the more than money. Not having to eat the overhead foisted on them also saves a lot of aggravation and stress.

This year one of the results was a bit off, because the threshold limits had changed, but just to be on the safe side the clinic recommended I see a specialist, one they’ve used in the past. It was an education.

It took three phone calls to get through. The first two were to an answering service, which messages were either lost or ignored. The third call finally awoke someone at the office, who wanted to know who I was (not unreasonable) and what I wanted (odd, but also reasonable, at least at first).

I repeated, several times, the referral source, what I wanted done, and that I had the results of the tests with me. Not good enough. The tests would have to be done under their aegis, at a significantly higher price that what the clinic charged. They used the same national testing company, and they claimed that they couldn’t access my recent test results online, which sounded amazing to me.

After being grilled (no medicare patients need apply) for some time, I finally had to bring the inquisition to and end by bluntly asking if they wanted the business, and if so how much it would cost for what I knew was perhaps five minutes face time with the specialist. It took a while for them to come up with a number, and it was stunning. It occurred to me that doctors’ get relief from being continually hosed by insurance companies and governments by gauging those who they believe have a lot of money, such as the self employed, cold predators with no sense of what their market will bear.

I closed by congratulating them on being so busy that they clearly didn’t need any more business. A few phone calls later I found another specialist who was more realistic in handling cash customers.

I later learned that the test company indeed does not make test results available online, nor does its competitors. Secure information lockboxes were figured out by the investment and financial industries decades ago, and why this couldn’t be done into GoogleHealth of Microsoft’s HealthVault, among other comparable services, demonstrates more that ineptitude. Baldly and bluntly, there’s nothing that will force the health industry to improve, certainly not more bureaucracy from the government and the insurance cartels.

The health industry is the next one to be put against the wall by the advances in technology. Those blood panels can be done at a tiny fraction of the cost, more accurately, securely and quickly, by automated reagents such as those from Abaxis and its competitors. And, not least, the force of effective innovation is happening apace offshore, being bolstered by medical tourism, easier and better diagnostics and telemedicine. Can’t wait.

© Copyright 2010 Chuck Brooks for FutureWare SCG

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Tags: abaxis, advances in medical technology, health information technology, home medical diagnostice, medical tourism, telemedicine

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