Check out this website.  Dr. Paul Dibble in Magnolia, Texas has jumped ship.  He doesn’t deal with insurance companies.  Period.  He has listed his fees on his website.  This is great stuff.  He e-mailed me recently to make contact and let me know that a patient of his had actually had surgery at our facility, the prices at our facility being considerably lower than anything the patient could find otherwise.  Magnolia, Texas is about a seven hour drive from Oklahoma City, but this drive translated into a several thousand dollar savings for this patient’s hernia surgery. 

Dr. Dibble spends a lot of his time researching prices for his patients.  If one of his patients needs laboratory testing, MRI’s, physical therapy or any other treatments, he takes it upon himself as a true patient advocate to find the best and the best-priced. 

In my brief conversation with him recently we both agreed that the surest guarantor of quality is competition.  A little healthy competition goes a long way toward making all of us in the medical community sharpen our skills and helps to keep the focus on the patient.  Why do patients see Dr. Dibble when the entire payment for a visit to him comes out of the patient’s pocket?  Because it is worth it. If he weren’t worth it, no one would go see him.  Because of  the confidence he has in his abilities and his dedication to his patients, he has placed himself on the free market firing line.  The service he provides must be distinctively better or else he would not be in business at all.  The accountability that is attached to him at the hip will never go away.  He has volunteered for it.  Patients are in his waiting room because they want to be there, not because he is on some approved list.

When you look at his price list, think again of the money he will save the people of Magnolia when they pay $100 for a laceration repair, rather than the exhorbitant amount charged by the local not for profit hospital.  And he’s making money!  Back, once again, to Bastiat’s “what is not seen.”

I believe that we will be seeing more and more of this in this country.  Dr. Dibble was very excited to find our center and our transparent pricing for his patients.  Like me, he is a proud member of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, the primary advocate of third party free medical practice.  I look forward to visiting with Dr. Dibble again soon and hope to see as many Magnolia medical refugees as he can send us.

G. Keith Smith, M.D.