In the March 15th New York Times, Pauline Chen, MD wrote about the challenge of getting doctors to begin thinking about what health care costs. She mentions a nonprofit that focuses on teaching medical students and doctors in training about the cost of care – costofcare.org.

You can read the article here.

In the article Dr. Chen states:

The patchwork of payment patterns that mark the American medical system makes it particularly difficult to teach young doctors. Net costs for treatments and medications vary depending on region, payer and even specific hospitals, so medical students and trainees often end up learning what is relevant only to their particular workplace. They might learn to prescribe a certain drug for diabetes because it is cheaper in their hospital formulary, only to discover later that the reverse is true in a different hospital or after policies have changed.