Costs of Care essay contest winners

Neel Shah reports on the winners of the Costs of Care essay contest.  Recall the theme:"Preference will be given to stories that best demonstrate the importance of cost-awareness in medicine. Examples may include a time a patient tried to find out what a test or treatment would cost but was unable to do so, a time that caring for a patient generated an unexpectedly a high medical bill, or a time a patient and care provider figured out a way to save money while still delivering high-value care."All four essays are excellent, but I want to include one here by a patient, Erin Plute, from Emory University in Georgia:The patient – blue-eyed, red-haired, and healthy but worried looking – guided the doctor’s hand to just below the angle of her jaw, where a small lump was barely palpable.  She had first noticed the swollen lymph node after a cold and thought nothing of it at the time.  But five months later, it was still there.  She knew it was nothing, but she couldn’t shake the thought that it might be related to the skin cancer she had had cut off of her shoulder one year earlier.  After all, melanoma can spread through the lymphatic system, and her dermatologist checked carefully for swollen lymph nodes at every appointment to make sure the cancer had not escaped the scalpel and metastasized.
Melanoma is a terrifying disease.  When caught early, it is easily treated by surgical excision.  When caught late, however, it is universally fa...
Source: Running a hospital - Category: Health Managers Source Type: blogs