Hoboken Mom Condo Living
Planning the long-term & juggling the everyday

I have tweeted recently about my family’s experiences with urgent medical care at PromptMD on 1st and Willow, six blocks from the PATH train. I have walked by their office many times over the past year but haven’t had the opportunity to check it out myself until this summer. Thanks to my husband’s infected cyst and my baby son’s cut foot, I have had lots of up close and personal interaction with them and their very interesting healthcare model.

US healthcare costs are through the roof but our outcomes suck. You may not be paying these costs upfront but one way or another the money comes out of our pockets, through increased premiums, limited coverage and higher state taxes to cover reimbursing hospitals millions of dollars to cover the massive amount of charity care they provide. Where do you think people go when they don’t have health insurance? The local ER, and they go for all sorts of ailments that could be treated much more cheaply outside of an emergency room setting (flu, diabetes, stitches).

So why do I think PromptMD is the healthcare model of the future? First off, they are cheap. Very, very inexpensive. As a former hospital administrator, I know healthcare costs range widely without rhyme or reason, and $279 for an initial visit plus two followups (one to make sure the laceration is healing properly and the other to remove the stitches) is an incredible deal. Add in the convenience of not having to make an appointment plus the fact that I can get reimbursed for the visit from my health insurance/flexible spending, and I am seriously considering going there for everything possible for my family of four. I like knowing we will have the same primary care physician regardless of what health insurance my husband’s employer provides (they have changed our insurer three times in three years). They are open seven days a week (from 8am-8pm Mon-Fri), so that works really well for our schedule (my husband stops by before and after work, I go before naptime at around 11AM).

The facility is also quite nice, with six exam rooms, an onsite lab to process strep tests and bloodwork, very hygenic with sterile procedures practiced at all times. The staff is really nice and did their best to adapt to a screaming one-year old with blood streaming from his foot. I got there 45 minutes after my son cut his foot and we were out of there within 45 minutes, which was well within medical guidelines to ideally treat lacerations.

I compared notes with another mom whose son recently went to the ER for stitches in his hand, and here were our side-by-side experiences:

The PromptMD visit cost 17% of what the ER trip cost. Even though I have insurance, I still have a $600 deductible and then 70% out-of-network coverage (in-network hospital stays are 80%). The best case scenario I would have been looking at would have been $935 out of pocket ($600 deductible + $255 after 70% coverage on the ambulance and stitches + $80 copays). Fortunately I have flexible spending dollars left, so I won’t have to pay a penny out of pocket for the PromptMD visit, but I would definitely have gone over my limit for the ER visit.

For this and for so many other reasons, I am adding PromptMD to my list of reasons to live in Hoboken.