People love the Apple Store. It has all of the elements that people look for in making a purchase these days. So it’s no small wonder that they are rapidly cornering the high tech market. Their approach is simple, straightforward, here’s your options. Here’s the cost. They can now check you out with a handheld device instead of having you stand in line at the cash register. “Can I e-mail you the receipt instead of printing it out or do you need a printed out receipt?”
That rocks! That is exactly what the healthcare industry needs to aspire to.
So to that end, I ran across this in my own back yard from Nashville General Hospital:
Medicos offers unlimited ultrasound services for an additional $200
Nashville General faces some stiff competition in town. This is a city with Vanderbilt University Hospital, St. Thomas (part of Ascension Health), Baptist and even the flagship facility for HCA located literally across the street from their corporate offices. Nashville General gets a lot of the low cost and uninsured in town, so it’s interesting to see such cost transparency coming from them instead of these big name market and industry leaders.
Now I’m going to guess they haven’t got the whole handheld device checkout thing down, but this is a nice start. I’m sure that Michele whose blog I pointed out earlier this week might have really enjoyed having this sort of information before the birth of her child.