2012 Essay Contest Finalists Announced!

For the third time,  we asked patients, nurses, and physicians to send us anecdotes that illustrate the importance of cost-awareness in medicine. What was in it for them? A chance to shine a national spotlight on a big problem: doctors and patients have to make decisions in a vacuum, without adequate information about how those decisions impact the costs of care. Also in it for them was a chance to win one of four $1000 prizes.

We received more than 150 submissions from all over the country - New York to California, Texas to North Dakota, Alaska to Oklahoma. We will be reviewing the very best submissions with the help of our judges - former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, ethicist and former White House advisor Zeke Emmanuel, New England Journal of Medicine editor-in-chief Jeffrey Drazen, and New York Times columnist and surgeon Pauline Chen.

Congratulations to our finalists! All of their essays will be published on our blog early in the new year. 

Providers:

Robbie Fenster (Rhode Island), a Brown University medical student describes  the power of the "need to know" and the challenge of talking to a patient about an unnecessary and expensive MRI

Dr. Brent Bauer (Minnesota), a professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic discusses a patient who underwent many years of expensive tests for chronic pain before being correctly diagnosed and successfully treated for a stress disorder 

Benjamin Robbins (Massachusetts), a Harvard Medical Student describes a patient he encountered in the emergency room who declines at CT scan after not being able to find out what it will cost

Ashley Phipps (Colorado), a medical student at the University of Colorado describes how a dedicated group of physicians and social workers helped a patient avoid a hospitalization by obtaining affordable antibiotics

Patients:

James Bliwas (Ohio), the brother of a cancer patient who preferred to die at home describes his struggle to obtain insurance coverage for a visiting nurse

Erin Plute (Georgia), an Emory medical student discusses the challenge of being an informed patient and how getting a second opinion helped her avoid an unnecessary CT scan

Dayton Opel (Wisconsin), a medical student from Wisconsin who struggled to decipher his emergency room bill even after calling the medical coders and ER physician

David Goldman (New York), the husband of a young woman with a strong family history of breast cancer and BRCA1 mutation describes the struggle of trying to value a "quality year  life" when making medical decisions

Costs of Care Essay Contest 2012: Stories from Patients and their Caregivers Uncover Opportunities to Improve Healthcare Value

Neel Shah, MD is the Executive Director of Costs of Care and a chief resident in obstetrics and gynecology based at Harvard Medical School.

As a presidential election looms and the American economy struggles to recover, the spiraling costs of healthcare have become a contentious political focal point without an obvious solution. Yet for patients and their caregivers, opportunities to get more bang for our buck present themselves every day. Over the last two years, as part of the Costs of Care Essay Contest, we have collected hundreds of anecdotes from all over the country that are filled with lessons learned.

Some stories describe all too common medical oversights. Renee Lux, a patient from Connecticut wrote to us about an unnecessary CT scan her doctor should have never ordered that labeled her with a preexisting condition and caused her insurance premiums to skyrocket. Other stories describe easily replicated ingenuity. Molly Kantor, a third year medical student, told us how she figured out how to treat her patient’s heart failure on a $100 budget.

Increasingly, these stories and the insights they provide are striking a chord, helping drive an important professional discourse that in recent months has reached the New England Journal of Medicine and even the Institute of Medicine. This effort has been buoyed by the success of the ABIM Foundation’s Choosing Wisely Campaign, and several other notable initiatives aimed at getting caregivers to examine their own role in healthcare spending.

That is why this year we’re running the contest again.

With the help of Jeffrey Drazen (editor-in-chief, New England Journal of Medicine), Donna Shalala (former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services), Zeke Emanuel (ethicist and former White House healthcare advisor) and Pauline Chen (surgeon and New York Times columnist), Costs of Care will be awarding $4000 in prizes to stories that best illustrate the importance of cost-awareness in medicine.

All stories are fair game and everyone is welcome to participate - examples may include a time a patient tried to find out what a test or treatment would cost but was unable to do so, a time that caring for a patient generated an unexpectedly a high medical bill, or a time a patient and care provider figured out a way to save money while still delivering high-value care. Submissions are due to contest@costsofcare.org no later than November 15, 2012.

Ultimately, no amount of regulating, reorganizing, or otherwise reforming the healthcare system will successfully contain costs unless we—both patients and providers--are invested in fixing the problem.