Script Writer Shares Story of Viral Hospital/Hotel Bill Video

By Dr. Vineet Arora (Twitter: @FutureDocs)

What Happens in Vegas Can Be Used to Teach Costs of Care

Funded with a grant from the American Board of Internal Medicine Foundation, Costs of Care has partnered with medical educators at Harvard Medical School and the University of Chicago (that would be us!) to start addressing this problem. We are developing a series of web-based medical education videos that use clinical vignettes to illustrate core principles of cost-consideration, including how to communicate with patients about avoiding unnecessary care and reducing overused or misused tests and procedures. As part of the project launch, we released a new teaser video today called “What if Your Hotel Bill Was Like a Hospital Bill?”. The video is a tongue-in-cheek depiction of the challenges patients face in deciphering medical expenses, and their additional confusion when they learn doctors are not trained to consider costs. - Excerpt from Costs of Care Press Release by Dr. Neel Shah

How does this relate to Vegas?

On a recent trip to Las Vegas with my family for the holidays, I was in the Bellagio lobby admiring the Chihuly glass ceiling. While that was impressive, I was also watching the clerks check in and out the long lines of visitors to the hotel. The staff explained any charges on the bill, confirmed that the bill agrees with the expectations of the patron and then finalized the transaction, printing a copy on the spot for the traveler before they got in the cab to the airport hailed by the bellman. What a far cry from hospitals where most of the hospital staff have no idea how much anything costs! After all, doctors are notoriously bad at considering costs in the doctor-patient relationship, as demonstrated by a great piece by Dr. Peter Ubel on his experience with the cost of his own prescription medications. As Paolo (or Paul Staisiunas who works as our research project manager in his day job) from Hotel Hospital highlights, "our hotel staff specifically focus on the highest quality of care...I doubt that they even know how much anything costs here." The rest of the script was easy to write. Shooting was a lot harder since we had to find a spot in the hospital that looked like a hotel but thanks to some creative camera angles and props from our MergeLab team, we were able to get it done.

Learning about costs of care is critical to taking care of patients. This was especially poignant as I recently completed inpatient service block at a nearby community hospital taking care of many uninsured patients who paid out of pocket for their medications (not to mention their hospital stay). Our residents were concerned about one patient who was uninsured and would have difficulty paying for Plavix, a critically important drug after his heart procedure. Review of his medications also revealed he was recently put on Lexapro, a nongeneric antidepressant (with a sordid history) that was costing him over 100 dollars a month when there is a generic alternative for 4 dollars a month, and help him afford his Plavix. When physicians do discuss costs, they also get it wrong and perpetuate a 'medical urban legend' like patients have to pay when they leave the hospital against medical advice. These are just a few of many examples of why teaching students and residents to bring up costs and arming them with tools to address the issue with their future patients is imperative. Without considering costs of care, we all take a 'gamble' that costs of care are not an issue for patients....Of course, the odds are against that.

Stay tuned for more work from our Teaching Value Project with Costs of Care funded by the ABIM Foundation.

--Vineet Arora, MD, MAPP

Special thanks to our production team and actors: Mark Saathoff , Andy Levy MS4, Kimberly Beiting, Paul Staisiunas, and Jeanne Farnan MD MHPE (and of course Neel Shah!)