Wes Spencer, co-founder of Sympl Benefits, breaks down why an MRI costs thousands at a hospital but a fraction of that at an independent facility. He walks through how referrals work and why the healthcare system keeps patients locked into expensive options.
For example, it's, it's a pretty routine process. I believe there's 40 million MRIs done across the country. So we're not talking about anything that's ultra complicated or specific. This is a taking a picture to find out and support a diagnosis. It's going to cost 2 to $3,000 at a hospital, probably much more in other states. But we have independent MRI facilities that can do it for less than a thousand, less than 500 in some cases. So why in the world are we not incentivizing the members of our health plans that are ultimately paying for this to to consider that there is options? The typical path is I talk to my primary care. My primary care refers me to a specialist. If that specialist needs a mri, they refer to the hospital's ecosystems MRI facility and that's where we have a problem. You know that MRI is going to cost triple or maybe four or five times what it should for the exact same picture.