Stories from Patients and their Caregivers Uncover Opportunities to Improve Healthcare Value

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...