How To Save Money and Time In Healthcare
Healthcare dominates news headlines, fixating on the rising costs of medical care.
Depressing and unhelpful, people often feel unempowered and confused when it comes to navigating healthcare.
Compiled below are a handful of health tech companies aiming to decrease medical costs, make care more convenient, and empower people to better understand their health.
Read on and find out how you can be a savvier healthcare consumer.
Save More Money On Healthcare Costs
Telehealth: The Next Time You Need to See a Doc
With the highest satisfaction scores in healthcare, telemedicine has little awareness. Change takes time, and healthcare is especially privy to it. No one thinks to download a new app keeled over a toilet drenched in sweat.
Ordering a doctor’s appointment from your phone is easy as ordering Thai food using a restaurant delivery app. Both of these companies offer flexibility with payment options so that you can use insurance or self-pay. Prescriptions are filled and delivered in the same appointment. Not to mention, you can do it all from your couch in minutes and order takeout while you’re at it.
Prescription Savings: Before You Buy Next Month’s Medicine
Imagine an item you buy monthly, like toilet paper, costing $2 at the drugstore across town but $150 at the grocery store across the street. You’d likely drive the extra few miles to save on the toilet paper. That’s precisely the case for prescription drugs.
Prices vary extremely. According to Forbes, rebates, negotiated discounts between insurance companies and drug makers, and different out-of-pocket costs can all affect how much each person pays for a specific drug. Put money back in your pocket using a prescription savings site. Neither of the two companies below sells or manufactures drugs; they show the lowest price for a given drug.
How to: Use RxSaver or GoodRx and type in your prescription drug name to see the nearest location at the lowest price.
Medical Scan Savings: Before You Schedule an MRI
A hundred million medical scans are performed in the U.S. every year. The average cost per scan is $800; however, there are ways to save up to $500 per scan. Medical centers purchase medical scan equipment for millions of dollars. Because the equipment is a high fixed-cost, the centers need to utilize the machine as much as possible to pay back the original price of purchase. Many of these centers experience machine downtime.
A few companies have discovered this gap in utilization and created entire businesses dedicated to increasing the number of appointments at these centers by negotiating savings per scan. Insurance or self-pay are available options. If prescribed a scan, you can ask your doctor to use these sites to find you the best rate or visit the sites yourself. For people who get scans often, the unfortunate outcome for many people with cancer, using these sites can add up to tremendous savings. MdSave offers lower prices for procedures if paid for upfront in the doctor’s office, so be sure to ask about it before booking a procedure.
How to: After receiving a doctor's prescription for a medical scan, visit MdSave or Medmo to search for a center with the lowest savings based on your location.
Medical Costs Savings: Research Before You Go
Prices vary widely in all aspects of healthcare for a range of reasons, and a little research can yield significant savings. There are several sites dedicated to surfacing transparent and accurate estimates for medical and dental costs. Fair Health Consumer has more than 29 billion claims sent by insurance companies to their database that they use to estimate future medical expenses when someone visits the site. Other sites rely on crowd-sourced data to determine prices for procedures like mammograms or knee surgery.
How to: Healthcare BlueBook, Fair Health Consumer, or Clear Health Costs to research and compare prices for devices, procedures, appointments, scans, and more.
Better Monitor Your Health
Your Ongoing Health
Most people see the doctor annually for a checkup and episodically for things like stuffy noses and sore throats. People get check-ups for their cars more often than their bodies.
As technology enables people to see real-time information about their health, like wearables monitoring heart rate, healthcare will shift from annual visits to ongoing monitoring of one’s health. Consumers are owning their health like never before.
One of the most informative ways to check on one’s health between annual visits is getting blood work done. You don’t need a prescription or a doctor’s order to request blood work. Blood work can tell a doctor a lot, and it’s helpful to track over time. A blood test is like a gauge, revealing measures of disease inside your body (although it cannot diagnose all medical problems). Routine blood work is essential for diagnosing many diseases and conditions, and screens for healthy blood sugar levels, kidney and liver function, and more.
How to: Quest Diagnostics (in my research this is consistently the cheapest option), EverlyWell, or Choose Health
An emerging area of fascinating research is focused on gut health. Deemed our “second brain,” our brain-gut connection is not fully understood yet. However, according to Johns Hopkin Center, researchers are finding evidence that irritation in the gastrointestinal system may send signals to the central nervous system that trigger mood changes. “These new findings may explain why a higher-than-normal percentage of people with irritable bowel syndrome and functional bowel problems develop depression and anxiety,” they found.
There are many open questions for gut health (probiotics are still debated), so these tests are better for the curious-minded. Test for common strands from the trillions of microbes in your gut and get recommended foods to eat and supplements to take based on your gut microbes.
Brain Health Is Important, Too
Fevers send us out the door to the doctor. Yet, how do we react when we feel down or extremely stressed for a few weeks? For many people, the answer is, sadly, nothing. Taking care of our mental health is as important as taking care of our physical health. Mental health startups are cropping up to use technology to make therapy more accessible.
Traditionally expensive and in-person, the shift in digital therapy decreases the cost and enables more interaction with the therapist for those “oh sh!t” moments that occur in between monthly visits. They also offer multiple pricing options, as well as a self-pay option for people who are concerned with privacy.
How to: TalkSpace, LemonAid, or Better Help offer digital therapy. Healthgrades is a great search tool to locate an in-person therapist near you and read patient-submitted reviews.
Female Health
The Future of Health conference highlighted the lack of research funding for women's health. Endometriosis affects more than six million women a year, yet there hasn't been a drug innovation for this illness until recently after more than a decade of being ignored.
Female-targeted startups are helping women better manage their health and fertility. Fertility checks can cost up to $1,500, which doesn’t cover the follow-up if additional medical attention or procedures are required. At-home fertility kits are significantly reducing the initial costs for women.
How to: Clue and Flo are fantastic period, and ovulation tracking apps that help a person better understand their cycle and corresponding symptoms. Modern Fertility is an at-home kit to test fertility. There are also specific blood tests for women, like thyroid tests, on Quest Diagnostics.
Managing Diabetes
The number of people who have pre-diabetes or diabetes is staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Center, “more than a third of U.S. adults have pre-diabetes, and the majority don’t know it.” Anecdotally, people with type one diabetes who stay up to date with innovation for their illness often inform their physicians about continuous glucose monitors or apps to better manage their diabetes. The market hasn’t caught up with innovation in devices and management taking place for diabetes.
Tidepool, a non-profit, allows people to see data from their insulin pump, continuous glucose monitor (CGM), and blood glucose meter, all in one place for free. It also tracks things like meals, exercise, and daily events, and learns from what happens to blood sugar levels from these activities.
How to: Tidepool (free), Steady Health or Livonogo (diabetes management), Dexcom (CGM device), Virta (blood strip management)
If You’re Taking Medicines
Half of all patients in the country don’t adhere to their prescription drugs as intended. A doctor pitched by a startup on using AI to cure an illness, not so jokingly said, “I wish patients would just do what we ask them to do for starters.” That includes completing medication and following usage directions. There are medication smart pill apps and caps to help remind people to take their medicine.
How to: Pillsy
Help Older Loved Ones
Baby boomers are retiring in droves, and navigating healthcare at that age can be dizzying. Many Millennials, the sandwich generation, are now caring for both their aging parents and young children. The startup Papa is connecting college kids with older adults for social connecting and quick errands. Honor is a way to find trusted caregivers.
How to: Medicare.gov (for Medicare recipients to find and compare hospitals and surgical centers). Papa, Honor (caregivers)
Happy Savings
Our healthcare system has a ways to go. I hope this list helps you discover the best solutions for managing your health and ways to reduce your healthcare spending.
P.S. I am not a doctor. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition.
