Saturday Surgery: $150
My primary care physician has a cash-only medical practice, and he is paid by the hour for whatever he does – be it a phone call, email, office visit, house call, or outpatient surgical procedure. He doesn’t charge higher prices for procedure complexity – that’s factored into the time it takes to complete the procedure. It’s a wonderful model for those of us who’ve chosen high deductible health insurance plans, and pay cash for primary care services. My husband and I save thousands of dollars/year with our plan, and spend a few hundred of that savings to cover our primary care needs. We also have our family physician available to us 24-7 via phone/email, and can generally see him for an in-person visit within hours of a request for one.
Yesterday was a perfect example of the incredible convenience of this model of care – I called Dr. Dappen at 10:30am and asked if we could come in to have a sebaceous cyst removed from my husband’s back. Dr. Dappen said he’d be happy to see us at 11:30am that day, so we hopped in a car and were finished with the procedure by 12:00. I even had fun taking photos for the blog (see below)…
Cost of the procedure: (surgery plus supplies): $150
Days spent waiting for an appointment: 0
Time spent in a waiting room: 0 minutes
Convenience of having a cash-only family physician: priceless
*For more information, check out: Doctokr Family Medicine, Vienna, Virginia*
Pearly appearance of small sebaceous cyst
Excision of sebaceous cyst
Wound closure with simple sutures
come over here as a medical tourist and i'll do that procedure for about 1/10th of the price.
come over here as a medical tourist and i'll do that procedure for about 1/10th of the price.
My wife just hacks away at the same type of cyst on my neck whenever she's feeling like taking it out on me. Cost to me, $0 (in money)…and she's not even a doctor!
My wife just hacks away at the same type of cyst on my neck whenever she's feeling like taking it out on me. Cost to me, $0 (in money)…and she's not even a doctor!
Cost to squeeze cyst repeatedly = 0 dollars
Understanding the pathophysiology behind cysts (that the walls of the cyst must be completely removed or else they'll just manufacture more gunk eternally): priceless
Thanks for the pics, I truly miss the “blood & guts” stuff as I've been off the ambulance for a few years (I also was an instructor for 13 years) due to my peripheral neuropathy progressively (in all 4 limbs due to lightening strike) getting worse. It really sucks having your body betray you as mine seemingly has while your brain retains all the knowledge I worked so hard to attain.