[dmitri1981]

Hospitals by their very nature are anti-competitive. There is no way that you as a patient can shop around. You do not have the necessary knowledge to compare the treatments, evaluate the options and decide on what represents the best value.

[antimagic]

Yup. I had to get some surgery done a few years back, and I went surgeon shopping. The surgeons did not like that one little bit. They got quite upset with me when they realised I was talking to several different surgeons and checking out my options.

Of course, as you point out, it is very difficult to evaluate medical professionals from a layman's perspective. I ended up talking to surgical nurses in the hospitals the surgeons worked out of. It was not easy finding the nurses, it took persistence and physically going to the hospitals in question and asking real nurses which nurses I need to talk to. Then I had to track those nurses down, and convince them to talk openly. It helped that I have a cousin that is a nurse, and she gave me some contacts / introductions.

I was glad I did it though. One of the surgeons on my shortlist had a very poor reputation amongst nurses as to his skills in the operating theatre, so I managed to avoid him.

As an aside, considering just how critical the nursing staff where about this guy's skills, it is incredible to me that he is still allowed to practice...

[dnautics]

that's generally not true. For most procedures done in hospitals there is nearly no reason why patients can't shop around. With basically the only exception being the ER, for true emergencies.

Moreover, even if NOT ALL patients shop around, say, even just 10%, there would be enough momentum going to put pressure on doctors to improve quality of care and decrease costs.

[watwut]

It is hard to shop around because prices are not transparent. It is very hard to find out in advance how much exactly will everything cost you. You can get some partial information (how much they charge for room), but they will not tell you in advance about all the tests you will have to pay. Then there are small item hospitals charge a lot for: band-aids for example. Unless you know a lot about healthcare system, you will not be able to guess all of them.

Plus, hospitals are not in habit of committing to agreed upon price in advance. So, even if you shop around the amount they will charge you still can be much different then the one you calculated.