It is like going to your local store and being able to see the price of different brands of products. Then you go to the checkout, and you pay for the product, a fee for the cart and a small facility fee for just being in the store.
This would be completely acceptable not only for any store, but anywhere you intend to buy goods or services. That’s how CAREPOI ™ works. CAREPOI ™ is one of a few industries that is a free market.
A free market is where there is no (or at least little) government interference, and healthcare fees are based on excellence, competition, and demand.
In CAREPOI ™, understanding true costs and setting prices is extremely easy. To make matters better and clearly transparent users are given access to see prices before they go in for procedures or appointments.
Patients become the sole decision-makers of the service they select based on all available options (price and quality features), which is a strong incentive for citizens. There is a clear system of pricing with simple market rules, causing no confusion, exceptions or losses.
So, what does a free-market healthcare system look like?
A free-market healthcare system has doctors and other medical service providers openly display prices and share outcomes data so patients can receive care based on the value they receive.
In healthcare, value is defined as the improvement in outcomes for a patient (commonly referred to as quality) compared to the cost the patient paid. Knowing these two key pieces of information would create competition and enable patients to regain more control over their health experiences, as long as society finds a way to help the patient become an engaged service-recipient. This is already happening in some areas of healthcare.
There is an alternative option and CAREPOI is already heading towards it: price transparency.
This simple step to disclose prices (both the chargemaster price and negotiated rate) upfront not only empowers patients, but also creates an incentive for doctors, hospitals, and other medical providers to be competitive on price while simultaneously improving their quality. This would also bring to light who the truly great providers and telemedicine nodes are as natural market forces would shift patients to the highest quality providers charging the fairest prices.
Whether that leads to a free-market healthcare system or a simpler, more affordable version of our current system, we can all agree that more transparent and affordable healthcare would be a great thing.