Show 934: What Are Hospitals Trying to Hide?

What Are Hospitals Trying to Hide?

Whatever your stance on the politics of health care insurance, everyone agrees that high health care costs are a problem. One patient was shocked to learn that his emergency treatment with anti-venom for snakebite came to nearly $90,000.

One way to combat high prices is for patients to pick the most cost-effective treatments, but trying to find out what a procedure will cost can be a big challenge. An investigative team consisting of a doctor and his 14-year-old daughter set out to find out what hospitals would share about prices. Parking: yes; EKG: not so much.

Hiding Medical Errors:

Hospitals also tend to honor transparency more in the breach when it comes to medical errors or doctors with less than stellar outcomes. Dr. Marty Makary has issued a call for his colleagues to embrace much more transparency in all these critical areas. How can that be accomplished?

This Week's Guests:

Jillian Bernstein is in the ninth grade at Haverford High School. Joseph Bernstein, MD, is Clinical Professor of Orthopedic Surgery at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. Their article was published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Steven Brill is a journalist and author of a TIME magazine special report: "Bitter Pill: How Medical Bills Are Killing Us." 

Martin Makary, MD, MPH, is Associate Professor of Surgery at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Surgical Director of the Johns Hopkins Pancreas Multidisciplinary Cancer Clinic. He is Chief of Minimally-invasive Pancreaticobiliary Surgery and Director of Minimally Invasive Pancreas Surgery. His book is Unaccountable: What Hospitals Won't Tell You and How Transparency Can Revolutionize Health Care.