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- Oct 13, 2010
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In another thread we touched on the fact that the prices of medical procedures are typically unknown until after the fact. http://www.early-retirement.org/for...s-is-about-to-double-79464-3.html#post1656675 Wouldn't it be nice to have a place to go to check the pricing before the fact? Even if the prices looked-up weren't guaranteed to be perfect, it would be better than nothing.
If there existed a non-profit site where you could submit your EOB's, and that site would save only procedure codes, provider identity, and negotiated price, and not save any personal information and not save the original EOB document (pdf or scan), would you be willing to help build this price database by submitting your EOB's?
There are sites that seem to be succeeding that have this crowd-sourced idea. Glassdoor is a site for employees of megacorps to compare notes on things, including sensitive information like salary. 800Notes has people on there disclosing phone numbers that are used by telemarketers and scammers. None of the participants gets anything back except the knowledge that they are helping their fellow man. But would this model work for something as touchy as healthcare records?
I would think the site would need to do a real-time scan of the uploaded documents, convert it to text, show it to the uploader with a statement like "What you see in this window is all we scanned, if you click agree, we'll post it to the database and delete your EOB. If you click disagree, we'll delete you EOB and data scanned from it."
But would that be enough? Most of us have little trust in web sites to keep our data from getting stolen. The data on this web site would have only public data; nothing to steal. I just wondered how people here would react to a web site that provided this service. Would you want to be a part of building a database to help your fellow health services consumer?
If there existed a non-profit site where you could submit your EOB's, and that site would save only procedure codes, provider identity, and negotiated price, and not save any personal information and not save the original EOB document (pdf or scan), would you be willing to help build this price database by submitting your EOB's?
There are sites that seem to be succeeding that have this crowd-sourced idea. Glassdoor is a site for employees of megacorps to compare notes on things, including sensitive information like salary. 800Notes has people on there disclosing phone numbers that are used by telemarketers and scammers. None of the participants gets anything back except the knowledge that they are helping their fellow man. But would this model work for something as touchy as healthcare records?
I would think the site would need to do a real-time scan of the uploaded documents, convert it to text, show it to the uploader with a statement like "What you see in this window is all we scanned, if you click agree, we'll post it to the database and delete your EOB. If you click disagree, we'll delete you EOB and data scanned from it."
But would that be enough? Most of us have little trust in web sites to keep our data from getting stolen. The data on this web site would have only public data; nothing to steal. I just wondered how people here would react to a web site that provided this service. Would you want to be a part of building a database to help your fellow health services consumer?