One Way To Save Money On Medical Bills

(Links in this post are affiliate links. I will be compensated when you make a purchase by clicking those links. See my disclosure page for more information)

I am hoping that this post will help others learn from our mistakes and  help families save money on medical bills from the first procedure instead of the second procedure like our family did.

I am not sure how my husband and I forgot this principle after we learned it so well from a varicose vein procedure I had done many years ago.

That time around this tip I am about to share with you saved us $1000’s of out of pocket expenses. This time it saved us $100’s but it could have been just over $1000 if we had thought to have done it before procedure one and not just before procedure two.

The tip is simple, and one used to save money in many other areas of finances.

What is our most successful way to save  money on medical bills?

Call around and compare prices before you have any non emergency procedures done.

Just like you might compare prices for cell phone rates you should take the time to call around and compare prices of medical procedures where you are going to be paying a portion of the bill out of your own pocket.

Of course if you are in an emergency situation you are not going to be able to do this, but if the procedure you are having done is either routine or non- emergency than taking the time and effort to call around and compare prices from place to place can have dramatic effects on your out of pocket expenses.

Here is how this simple step saved our family just under  $600 in 2014.

I needed an ultrasound done to check on a uterine fibroid that was giving me some trouble.

The first time I simply let the front desk people at my doctor’s office set up an appointment for my towns local ultrasound center.

The out of pocket bills for that locally done ultrasound were $623.88. That is a lot of money for our  family to swallow, and it took my husband a significant amount of overtime to get it paid down.

When my doctor recommended I get a second ultrasound done several months later to make sure the ovarian cyst they saw had gone away and therefore was simply a cyst,  (there is a lot of cancer history in my family) I wasn’t happy about costing our family another $623.88.

My husband who is a registered nurse suggested perhaps we should call a few other ultrasound centers in neighboring cities and see if   there was one that billed less to insurance, that also took our insurance, which would in turn mean we would have to pay less out of pocket.

With 2 phone calls my husband found an ultrasound center in a larger center about 45 minutes away from us who billed less to insurance than we paid out of pocket for the first ultrasound.

Our total out of pocket bill for the second ultrasound  was $25.03 .

For basically 30 minutes work of calling and one hour and a half of driving we saved $598.85; that is an hourly rate of $399 for our time and effort.

I asked my husband (a registered nurse) if someone would need to work in the medical field in some way to be able to make the calls. He said no, anyone could do it you simply  need to know the exact procedure you are having done and call the medical centers in your area and ask what they charge for that procedure (they will put you through to someone who knows billing information).

The place I went to for the second ultrasound was not in a fancy building like the first was, and it didn’t have an amazing waiting room like the first had. It was a very plain Jane older office, but it had the  machines needed to do the procedure and the trained staff to run them and that is  all  I needed.

How have you saved on your medical bills?

For a list of 52 different websites, apps, and stores our thrifty family uses to help us keep our expenses low, click here to visit our Thrifty Tools Resource Page.

Available in paperback and Kindle on Amazon–get your copy here!