The Simple Wealth

It takes collective efforts to improve the healthcare system.

I read an news on Friday, May 30th, on SFGate: Consumer Reports rates Bay Area hospitals by Victoria Colliver, Chronicle Staff Writer, saying that Consumer Reports is expanding their rating service into healthcare. This is a very good news, the healthcare system is so broken here in the States, I’m very glad that Consumer Reports is bringing awareness to this area.

The rating service “judges hospitals by how much care they provide, with facilities termed more aggressive keeping patients hospitalized longer, offering more tests and procedures and spending more for care than those labeled conservative.”

More healthcare is not necessarily better

“More is not always better. When (patients are) in hospitals longer, the longer exposure can lead to hospital-acquired disease; more doctors involved in care can lead to communication problems,” said Dr. John Santa, director of the Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center.–from the news article

When my baby was in the Emergency room, a nurse spent about 30 minutes poking needle, making her screaming and crying so miserably, to find a tiny vein for IV, a procedure she didn’t need. More is not always better. A good friend of mine recently took her 15-week-old baby to ER because of fever-she called the advisory nurse first and was told to take her in-they made her baby stay there for 3 nights doing all kinds of tests, including drawing spinal fluid. I was not able to reach her and did not hear from her for a few days. She told me that she was just ‘traumatized’ by all the tests they did to her baby, her baby was fine and the fever went away by itself, it was just a viral fever she got from her sister who was sick a week ago.

Big differences between different hospitals

From my recent emergency room experiences for the incident of my baby’s fall, which resulted medical bills received so far totaled about $16,000 and no actual medical treatment needed( baby’s magical healing power was all she needed), I knew the big differences between Kaiser ER and Children’s Hospital’ ER. To name just one thing: we only saw 1 doctor in Kaiser ER, and several doctors in Children’s Hospital ER. The more doctors show up to talk to you, the more it costs you. Besides, we were told that our baby was going to be watched overnight at the Intensive Care Unit of Children’s Hospital, we did not anticipate that she had to go through the ER procedures again over there, and we had to pay for their ER fees and doctors fees again.

Just knowing the degree of aggressiveness of hospitals is not enough

I did a screenshot of the chart provided in the news article. The above two hospitals, California Pacific Medical Center is less aggressive and yet more expensive. So just knowing the degree of aggressiveness is not enough.

One solution to improve our healthcare system:

Make hospitals disclose their fees publicly

When we go to see dentists, we usually are able to attain pricing first, but why can’t we get pricing first in the hospitals, where costs are so much higher than dental fees?

We need hospitals to disclose their fees publicly so that we can shop around. We need doctors to disclose fees first before proceeding any treatment. If a small dental office could do it, why a humongous structure of a hospital can’t do it? If we knew that to have ambulance to transfer our baby to Children’s Hospital would cost $2727, we would have taken her there ourselves.

Related Posts:

•Carnival of Wealth, Money & Life: June 2nd edition has a great post on the healthcare system: Cash Before Treatment - The Crisis in Medical Care Funding on Physician Entrepreneur.

•Also check out Lynnae’s great post: (Not) Keeping Up With Our Parents: Health Care

Take a look, we need all the awareness we can get, once again:

It takes collective efforts to improve the healthcare system.

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Carnival of Money, Growth and Happiness #45 is live in the air. If you are interested in starting a internet business, check out Quick Money From Your Internet Skills. I like Amanda’s post: How My Passion is Changing My Life at VagabondetteVA.

Carnival of Everything Finance: # 18 is live in the air as well. Below are some of the posts I read and enjoyed:

•Growing money at Make Money

•Why Being Generous Makes You Wealthy at Personal Development

•How To Make Money From Balance Transfer Credit Cards at Money Blue Book

Besides readings from carnivals, one recent post at fivecentnickel, Watch Out for Online Bill Pay Errors, is related to my post, Is online banking more reliable or mailing a check?, so I share it with you as well.

We have lived in the same town for about six years now, and every year we would not miss our favorite local event-the downtown Stroll, the local businesses provide free food and drinks, mostly residents of this small town hang out on the street for 2, 3 hours in the evening and enjoy live music.

This year my hubby came home a little bit early from work. We walked to the downtown. When we walked by a friend’s house, it occurred to me that he might not be aware of this event, so we stopped and knocked on his door, and he joined us. We first stopped at the grocery store, they had fresh bread and extra virgin olive oil for dipping, and delicious fresh watermelon juice and wine. Next door real estate office offered small ham and cheese sandwiches. Starbucks had small frothy mocha drinks and different kinds of cakes. The eyeglasses store had cheese and fruit platter and wine. Our favorite Thai restaurant had spicy beef curry, jasmine rice, papaya salad, and Thai iced tea. While I was eating Thai food, I saw my dear friend’s hubby walking with his kids, I asked him where my friend was, he said that she was home cooking dinner. Apparently they did not understand the tradition of the downtown Stroll here. He called her to quit cooking and came and enjoyed the festive event . We met a lot of neighbors and friends, Moms and Dads, it’s a lot of fun.

At the end of the Stroll, a lot of people were drawn to the Kids’ band, including little toddlers enjoying the music and dancing in front of the band. It was such a wonderful evening. It’s a small town, so we feel homey, seeing a lot of familiar faces. A lot of people were hanging out, yet it was not too crowded.

How about your town or city? Do you have such local event?