INBW19: The Power of the Patient's Choice, With Crane Stavig, Garden Designer, Patient, and Consumer

I'm a creative and detail-oriented professional gardener with many years of hands-on experience in addition to attending ongoing college courses at Edmonds Community College in their highly regarded Horticulture program. In my previous career, I spent a lot of time working with clients on innovative ways to deliver the results they wanted while keeping an eye on the big picture. Oddly, garden design is quite similar. I always have to keep a budget and overall objectives in mind while developing strategies and tactics, and managing external resources. Specialties: Garden design; excel at delivering innovative solutions to garden challenges. Precision Pruning of specimen trees including Japanese maples and flowering trees. College level and professional training in pruning. 02:30 Why Crane pays out of pocket for his exam. 03:15 The chain of events that Crane, as an average patient, went through to find out the cost for his hernia surgery. 04:20 Why Crane thought to ask for the price of the procedure in the first place. 05:15 What Crane did next when he found out how much the cost of the procedure was going to be. 06:40 David Contorno's price shopping video - check out his episode, EP186. 09:10 Online services patients can go to get a sense of cash prices for certain procedures. 09:45 Why discovering price breakdowns for patients with insurance is so difficult. 13:50 "Generally speaking, the lower the cost, the higher the quality." 15:50 What Crane found out from his research on guroo.com. 18:15 The inconsistency with negotiated insurance prices. 20:20 "Most care provided in this country is not acute." 21:10 Resources to check the quality of the care you are receiving: healthgrades.com, leapfroggroup.org, and medicare.gov/hospitalcompare. 25:50 "Give me more information that I can make a decision on."