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The recently launched Twin Cities website, Carol.com, puts an interesting spin on healthcare pricing transparency. You can click on a body part, condition or procedure, and voila, a listing of area providers with procedure description and costs. There’s definitely truth to their themeline: “Changing the way you look at healthcare.” But truth be told, I don’t want to look at healthcare this way. Buying it from a menu kinda freaks me out.

I know there’s a healthcare crisis and price transparency is in, but there’s so much more to the purchase decision. Continuity of care. Quality of care. And most importantly, a face-to-face relationship with your healthcare provider. Someone that talks to you, reads your body language, asks some probing questions, gets to the bottom of the issue . Right now, Carol appears to be a work in progress with a very limited listing of services - barely usable from my browsing. But they say there’s a lot of money behind it and it’s being watched by the big guys. Yikes. 

My opinion is it could one day be a useful supplement to the healthcare purchase decision, but in no way a replacement. There is one thing I really like about it — the name. It’s unexpected, memorable, approachable - “like leaning over the fence to get advice from a neighbor.” Cute.  Check it out at www.carol.com and let us know what you think.

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