Duplication causing high medical costs

I’ve discovered one of the reasons medical bills have gotten so high — duplication. The explanation needs some background first.

When my doctor decided to retire, he sold his practice not to another doctor, but to the hospital he was affiliated with. My doctor’s office had been in a converted house, the same place the doctor he purchased the practice from had used, The hospital, naturally, didn’t want to work out of the old house location, so it built a new building to house the practice.

The building is constructed like a piece of bread. The spacious waiting room is in the center; rows and rows of chairs, taking up (guessing) half of the “white bread.” Function space (Records, break room, etc.) take the rest. The six examination rooms are around the outer walls of the building, the crust.

The shape of the examination room is reminiscent of an old phone booth turned on its side. A brand new building, built especially for medicine, should be, theoretically, eminently usable. Yet when my doctor had to get past me and my wheelchair, he had to turn sideways and squeeze by, the room was so packed.

Now comes the explanation of the reason. When I commented on how tight the examination room was, my doctor assured me they were bigger than the ones he had in the house. But the room had ALL the equipment he might need crammed into it, including an X-ray machine (Cost to purchase same runs from $7,000 to $30,000. For reference, a dental X-ray machine is $6,000. Source: quick call to library), instead of a special X-ray lab. There are six examination rooms, so total cost for X-ray machine duplication alone is somewhere between $32,000 and $240,000, depending on model. I’m sure there are other duplications that I didn’t recognize.

Carol Johnson

Wauconda