Next chapter …

After 13 terrific years, I have left Southcoast Health System to take advantage of some new and exciting opportunities. 

This was the right time for a move — both for me and for Southcoast. 

I invested a great deal of my professional and personal life into Southcoast and our communities. I am proud to have positioned the marketing, advertising, PR and community-focused functions at Southcoast for a very strong and sustainable future. 

In recent years, I have become increasingly interested and involved in improving the patient experience — from transparency of quality reporting to improving customer service to exploring new ways to build patient engagement by harnessing marketing principles and social media. All of these will be vitally important in health care’s brave new future.

I was proud to serve Southcoast, our patients and the communities of the South Coast region. I had a great run with an absolutely amazing and creative team. We won boatloads of awards every year — and I enjoyed it immensely. 

I’ll be hanging out here online and hope you will continue to stop by. 

News will be ongoing. Stay tuned.

Cheers,

— Jim

 

Price: Health care's next frontier

First it was quality. Then patient satisfaction. Say hello to health care's new competitive pressure: 

Price.

The Surgery Center of Oklahoma has gone all in on the price front. 

Need an Achilles repair? $5,730.

How about a cochlear Implant? $8,800.

A breast lymph node image will set you back $815.

This is "all inclusive" pricing — one charge for the surgery, the facility fee, the surgeon’s fee and anesthesiologist’s fee. 

One charge. One bill. Simple for the patient.

Have insurance? Read this disclaimer: 

NOTE: If you are scheduled for surgery at our facility and we are filing insurance for you, the prices listed on this website do not apply to you. 

NOTE: If you are scheduled for surgery at our facility and we are filing insurance for you, the prices listed on this website do not apply to you.

 

That's because your insurance provider (whether it be a government-supported program like Medicare or Medicaid or private insurance) negotiates its own rates. They may be higher or lower. And you may never know (but you should!).

The message here? Price is important. More patients are responsible for covering more of the cost of their procedures. That means they will care more and more about price.

So in addition to posting information about quality scores and patient satisfaction scores, hospitals and doctors will now need to consider posting pricing.

Source: 37Signals