Center for Diagnostic Imaging

This will be the first in a series of reviews related to knee surgery I had in early 2007. I tore my ACL in my left knee and had to have it replaced by a hamstring tendon from my leg.
The first step before surgery is to confirm the damage. X-​rays are mainly for bone structure, so to look at ligaments, one has to do an MRI. I have an extremely high deductible on my health insurance plan, so I knew I’d be paying for things related to my surgery for quite a while before my deductible was met.
I decided to call a bunch of different MRI places instead of blindly going to any clinic. I was amazed. The prices ranged from $ 600 to over $ 2000 for the same procedure!
CDI was the lowest cost and I figured the equipment has to be relatively similar. While I’ve never had a second MRI, I assume I was right. The equipment looked new, had cool LCD flat panels hooked up to it, and did its job well. The tech even let me look at the results.
I was about 10 minutes late to my appointment and even though I was rushed from place to place within the clinic (presumably because there were appointments behind me), everyone was still very polite. A bit perturbed, I think, but still polite.
It just goes to show that there really is a serious problem with the U.S. health care system and that it pays to shop around. Even if your health plan pays for the majority of your procedures, you can do your part to keep health care costs down by shopping around. The costs will eventually come back at you in the form of higher monthly premiums. And now that we have Unilocal,you be assured that you’re still getting excellent care even if the price doesn’t seem to reflect it.
CDI is a great value considering the other 10 or so places I called all had fees more than double the CDI cost. My doc saw what he needed to see and confirmed a torn ACL. Part 2 of the story coming soon…