How to save money with your healthcare choices | Nicole Semeraro | TEDxHartford

Chances are that at some point in

your

life you will encounter a health scare. You will either be lying in pain and suffering looking up from a stretcher or

your

stomach will drop watching someone you love endure pain and suffering at times like this. It stops, fear and helplessness bathe your body. Universal human emotions that unite us all in moments of fear, pain or lack of knowledge. It's impossible to make an informed decision, so what's the cost? First the incident and then the bill, and before you know it. You're paying something much higher than you thought which, frankly, could cause financial devastation.

The fact is that 70% of Americans cannot confidently say they understand the cost of

healthcare

services, that's 210 million people. It's amazing. I have had the privilege of leading in Healthcare for the past 18 years. I have had to become more vigilant than I ever thought I would have to be as a

healthcare

consumer at its core. Healthcare consumerism is the idea that people should have the power to make informed decisions when treating healthcare like any other. Other consumer purchases we make where we look for and expect the best value for our

money

, all stories tie together with a singular thread, even if we don't plan ahead or ask questions to determine value today.

I'll give you the basic concept of planning ahead and three simple questions you can ask starting tomorrow that will really change the way you approach healthcare. How many of you remember your first car? That's what I thought mine was a 1982 Subar G named Sammy that had a hole in the trunk my freshman year of college. Sammy dad forever and although he was very upset, he had the abs absolutely ready to upgrade to my dream car, a Volkswagen Beetle. One day I was driving down the highway and saw a white Volkswagen Beetle at a used car dealership.

I immediately stopped. I ran to the car dealership, found the salesman and he said, "I'm taking this baby for a ride" the moment I opened the door, those black leather seats, all I could think about was criticizing the Spice Girls, play with the applicant and put a flower in the vase. next to the steering wheel and then I looked down and saw it was a shifter I had never driven before in my life but I didn't care and as we were leaving the car dealership trying to engage the clutch. I knew I wanted that car when we got back to the dealership, someone else knew I wanted it too.

The salesman coincidentally told me that two other people would be back within the hour to take Betsy for a test drive. Yes, he had. I already named her fear. The pressure of panic took over me. It wasn't the time to make an uninformed decision, but what did I do? I applied for a loan that I couldn't pay. I was approved and took that car off the lot that day for a few hours. I later called my dad and he asked me how much I paid for it and then he proceeded to tell me that I was scammed.

How many of you would unknowingly flush thousands of dollars down the toilet like I did with Betsy? No one would, the harsh reality is. most of you are in healthcare and have no idea. I recognize that certain situations in healthcare are absolutely emergent and completely unavoidable, yet 43% of healthcare costs can be purchased. I give them time to plan and we save them from costly mistakes. How do we solve it? My belief is that you have the power to solve this problem and it starts with asking three simple questions: First, who are the healthcare providers in my community that perform this clinical service, not just one, a list of them you cannot trust in just one. refer the second question this is new be prepared how much it will cost and the third is what is the current procedural terminology, CPT code for short.

I see a lot of blank stairs in that one, but I promise when we're done. You will recognize that this is your healthcare superpower and you will unlock the mystery of healthcare prices in 2019, a good friend of mine had been suffering from knee pain for years, she couldn't even walk down the street without limping, it was devastating to see. who needed a KN. replacement so what did she do? She went to her primary care doctor, who referred her to an orthopedic surgeon. The orthopedic surgeon agreed that she needed a new replacement and it was scheduled for a month later.

It had a successful result. He was on the road to recovery. and then a few weeks later the bill came to a whopping $42,000 with thousands of dollars she owed herself. What was wrong with that story? Well, the first thing is that she went to the only orthopedic surgeon that her primary care referred her to. This can no longer happen if you are going to be an empowered healthcare consumer, you should ask your doctor's office for a list of providers. Go to Google, your best friend, or your health insurer's website. At the time she never asked him how much it cost him, she didn't.

I even knew until the bill arrived in the mail, did that happen to anyone before but she didn't want it to happen again? Fast forward to today in 3 weeks. Deb will receive the second new replacement for her, but this time the story is quite different. I shopped with six different surgeons and we discussed cost and quality. This time the bill will be $118,000 versus 42, a difference of $24,000 for the same surgery in the same community with likely the same successful outcome. The reality is that it is in each of our communities across the United States that there are different prices for the exact same healthcare services.

Now I know what you're thinking: high quality equals high cost. I mean, we look at Mercedes, BMW, Apple, but the reality is with healthcare we need to rewire our brains to stop thinking that. High quality equals high cost when it comes to health services that you can buy because that is simply not true, what you find is that many times when people take control of the process and compare prices, they get better results because they have proactively made an informed decision in the third party. The question is my favorite, what is the CPT code? So for all my Target shoppers, what do you do?

They walk into Target with a short list and all of a sudden when they come to checkout they get a full cart. I'm just saying you have a card full of stuff and what do you do, you take something out of the cart and you scan it and when you scan it, what shows up on this screen you scan the barcode, there's the price, the CPT The code is the healthcare version of the barcode you scan at your favorite store or Target. It's your best friend when it comes to unraveling the mystery of healthcare pricing. A few months ago I had personal medical attention.

I had a mass in my left breast that I needed to have a diagnostic mammogram when I found out that, I was absolutely terrified, like I thought the worst immediately, like most women do when we hear something like that, but at that moment I came out of the room, I went to the front desk and the woman asked me if she could schedule my mammogram, but instead I asked her for a list of imaging clinics in the CPT code with the order "I will never forget." I left the office in my car that day, I sat in my car crying and I started dialing those five Imaging clinics and what I found in those 30 minutes that I took a moment even though I was terrified was a price difference between $300 and $1,100 for the same Health Care Service guess which one I chose the $300 option no, if we think about the things in life that really matter to us, we think about vacations, how much time we spend planning vacations, road trips, airplane, sun , snow, children's birthday parties, holidays, what people will wear for their family photos, a lot of time and effort is focused on thinking about the things that matter to us, doesn't it make sense to start approaching your healthcare decisions with the same rigor and enthusiasm that you do with everything else in your life?

A good friend of mine once told me that he sits down every morning and writes in his prayer journal that he is healthy enough to be able to sit on the floor and play with his granddaughter Abby, a good friend of mine who almost passed away two years ago. and I know a lot of people in the audience have had these Sam ex act stories are emotional and difficult without our health, what do we have? My son Jack played soccer when he was little one day, September 29, 2018, it was a beautiful day in South Carolina. He had his little brother on my hip. and I was cheering like a wild woman while my son was walking down the field getting ready to score a goal when suddenly in an instant everything changed from the wing a little boy from the opposing team kicked that ball so hard right at Jack I heard it break I saw my son fall to the ground and I let out the most heartbreaking scream I had ever heard and what did I do?

I broke every soccer parent rule there is and ran onto the field even though my husband was telling me not to. I didn't care that my baby was hurt, but at that moment when Terri was terrified, she had a plan that we went back to. We knew we had to go get an x-ray. We took him to the place where I already knew he had an x-ray that was affordable with a doctor I knew and had planned although I had never wanted these things to happen to my children that day he broke his wrist, what did they do?

They put it in a splint. They put a sling on his shoulder, they sent him with a paddle and they sent us with an orthopedic consultation for Monday with a doctor we had already chosen this story is more about kids and soccer and they are crazy soccer moms this is about how if you plan your medical care in advance, you will save thousands of dollars because that day we saved over $1,000 because we knew where we were going even though we never wanted this to happen. I want you to leave here and I want you to go home. and I want you to write a list of all the health care services that you will need for the next year, so preventive care, primary care doctor, if you are 45 years old.

I hate to tell you that you were on the agenda for a colonoscopy this year, but I promise you that it will be the best cleaning you will ever have in your life and then the things that none of us want to happen will happen, what are those emergency situations, who are those doctors you might need to see, well, we have three kids between them. My husband and I have had six sets of ear tubes and two tonsillectomies, so today we have an ENT doctor on speed dial. I like to call myself a pickle ball player.

Anyone else, well let me tell you if you play pickle ball and you don't. I don't have an orthopedic surgeon on speed dial. Find out a curious fact. UBS actually published an article that says more than $500 million will be spent on pickle ball-related injuries in the U.S. alone in 2023. Plan Ahead Orthopedic Surgeon. Healthcare consumerism isn't just a buzzword, it is. A necessary mindset for today's world allows you to have the power to be informed to save thousands of dollars with good health we can inhale we can exhale we can live a life of purpose passion without it we simply cannot well I recognize that our healthcare system is tremendously complex and completely overwhelming for many, what I do know is that you are the one who has the power to make the decision of where you get your healthcare and it is you who decides how much you pay for it.

The sad news is that 210 million people don't know where to start, but the good news is that now you do.