I wasn’t able to get out go shopping on Black Friday so I thought I would do some catching up today. Since we are now in the season when “it” is going around, I thought I would be a good healthcare consumer and get some prices for a strep test for when I might need one. I thought my question was simple enough. “How much do you charge for a strep test?” I made a list of general practioners provided by my current insurance provider’s web site. I thought this is going to be easy, it even identified which of the fifteen practices were accepting new patients. I soon discovered how wrong my initial impression was.

The first office I called explained that their fee for a strep test has a sliding scale based on what they end up having to do, my household income and the number of people in my family. Right away I knew that I was in for a long day. When I asked for a further explanation the sliding scale structure the nice man on the phone suggested that I “bring at least fifty bucks”. Ah now we are getting somewhere. I have a number.

The next place I called politely told me that the fee for a strep test would include an office visit fee between $108 - $215 plus $44 for the strep test. I kindly asked the nice lady on the line what determined whether the office visit would be $108 or $215, if perhaps this was associated with which day of the week I had my appointment. She indicated that it was not tied to the day of the week and that my office visit fee would probably be around $150. Now I am on a roll.

On my third call the nice lady told me that the office visit would be $110 and that she would be happy to check on the strep test fee if I could hang on for a minute. I said I would be happy to hold and thanked her for going to get this information. While I was on hold a different person picked up the phone to help me and I explained that I was on hold waiting to get the cost of a strep test. She said I can provide you with that it is $88 for the office visit plus $38 for the strep test. Not only am I getting the information I set out to gather I am now getting a discounted office visit fee for being placed on hold. Now that I think of it I should have gotten that second lady’s name so if I ended up there I could have asked her to process my bill.

The forth call was clearly not a doctor’s office. Let’s just leave it at that.

The fifth call was a doctor’s office but they could not help me with my strep test considering they only treated sleep disorders. I am going to file this one away because I may need them once the confusion of trying to determine how much is charged for a strep test gives me insomnia.

On my seventh call the nice lady lowered her voice, covered the phone with hand and said, “You should probably just go to a clinic, that is your best bet.”

Call number eleven explained that in order to get a cost for a strep test I would “have to establish a primary care physician” To which I asked, “How do I establish a primary care physician?” She told me that she would need to “take my information and fax it to their scheduling department and then the scheduling department would contact me to set up an appointment for me to see a primary care physician.” Maybe in my first appointment I can ask the primary care physician how much a strep test costs.

I did get clear answers to my question from my 6^th, 9^th, 12^th and 13^th calls.

All in all my day of shopping yielded a range of fees for a strep test from $79 on the low end to a high of $259.

Of course, I could just follow the suggestion from my first call and see what I can get for fifty bucks.