Four years ago, Dave
deBronkart spoke at a medical conference, with his face displayed on a
giant screen. Afterward, a doctor told him that a spot on his face
looked like basal cell carcinoma.
She was right. That
cancer was unlikely to spread, but it needed to be treated, and
deBronkart’s health insurance policy had a $10,000 deductible. Any
treatment, then, would come out of his pocket. How would he find the
right treatment at the right price?
The reason deBronkart
was attending the conference was that he is an advocate for patient
involvement in health care. So he decided that, as an experiment, he
would invite proposals on his blog, e-PatientDave. He outlined what he was looking for and asked health care providers to bid for his business.
No one did, of course.
“I didn’t expect to get a response,” he said. “Hospitals don’t have a
‘submit a bid’ department. But you hear over and over that patients are
the reason for high health costs. I pursued it as far as I could to
explore what happened when a patient tries to be a responsible
consumer.”
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