Describe the aspect of the podcast (what happens, with whom, and why is it entrepreneurial?
In the podcast, Econtalk: Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care, the guest speaker is anesthesiologist and entrepreneur, Keith Smith. Keith Smith is the co-founder of Surgery Center of Oklahoma located in Oklahoma City. During Econtalk: Keith Smith on Free Market Health podcast, the host Russ Roberts states that the topic of the podcast is that center, the potential for a true market in healthcare--not the one we have now, which is distorted in so many ways. (Roberts, 2019). Roberts mentions the unconventional way the website of Surgery Center of Oklahoma is set up to where patients can roll their cursor over the coded body on the screen and then, the list of surgeries able to be done along with price are included so that patients have full awareness of how much surgery costs depending on which body part the patients click. Keith Smith got the idea of Surgery Center of Oklahoma after starting to work in conventional hospitals in the 1990s. While working in the hospital, Smith started to notice many patients were paying overly large amounts for surgery procedures that did not cost that much and in return, many customers either didn’t pay or couldn’t pay hospital bills which left hospital staff and administration to be underpaid due to the government unskillful in calculating the resource base relative value scale which caused hospitals to rake up profit. That’s when Keith Smith and Steve Lantier, another Anesthesiologist, got their entrepreneurial juices flowing and decided to open and operate Surgery Center of Oklahoma in 1997. Surgery Center of Oklahoma mission is to be able to tell patients how much their medical procedure is going to cost with the promise of providing the best care possible.
Why is it interesting?
One thing interesting about the organization of Surgery Center of Oklahoma is that they have kept their medical procedure expenses at the same cost from when they started in 1997, no matter what the economy is experiencing. In the podcast, “Econtalk: Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care” Smith states that Surgery Center of Oklahoma procedure cost happened the first week were opened. We knew we were onto something. After we crunched our numbers on our end, we realized we were profitable at that number. To this day, that's still our price. The prices on our website are the same prices we quoted over the phone in 1997 (Roberts, 2019). This gives upcoming customers a sense of relief to find a surgical center that is 100 percent transparent with affordable prices and gives past customers a sense of trust knowing that they successfully recovered from an affordable medical procedure. This leads to Surgery Center of Oklahoma endorsing in free advertisement from word-of-mouth recommendations from previous patients that had a good experience.
Elaborate on the interaction/relationship between entrepreneurship and society from the perspective of the podcast.
The aspect of providing a surgery center to the public that is 100% transparent with medical procedure costs while giving patients excellent medical attention and care is something unheard of until 1997. Throughout the podcast “Econtalk: Keith Smith on Free Market Health Care”, has given many examples of how his practice Surgery Center of Oklahoma has helped millions of individual patients receive the medical procedures they need at a good reasonable price that wouldn’t cost an arm and a leg for a simple medical procedure. For example, Keith Smith states that 10 years ago Surgery Center of Oklahoma had launched their website with the coded human body figure that lists the prices of a list full of years’ worth of certain medical procedures Surgery Center of Oklahoma are able to successful accomplish. After the launch of Surgery Center of Oklahoma website, their first customer were Canadians patients that did have the needed care accessible in Canada, so they traveled to Oklahoma to do so. Keith Smith, anesthesiologist, and co-founder of Surgery Center of Oklahoma stated that there are groups of buyers and patients in this country and outside of this country that are price sensitive, and they do care that there's a $10- or $15- or $20,000 difference between a price at our facility and wherever it is that they live if it's available. (Smith, 2019). This affects society in a positive way because it is well known that medical procedures are not cheap and hospital bills can take years to pay off but, Surgery Center of Oklahoma has made medical and surgical procedures more affordable while patients receive professional care without having to experience financial issues so that patients only must worry about the health of themselves. Surgery Center of Oklahoma price of procedure is the most affective attribute because it gives patients that are less fortune an option to receive professional medical and surgical procedure that would not have had anywhere else.
Society supports the aspect of giving patients professional medical and surgical procedures at a much affordable price range while being well taken care of because that is what consumers want, good service at an affordable price. Especially when Surgery Center of Oklahoma competitors like large hospitals are telling patients facility costs are $19,000 and that’s not even the total costs for the actual medical procedure alone, of course society is going to choose the choice of having a professional medical procedure done for an affordable price over large hospitals with overly expensive medical bills. Surgery Center of Oklahoma gives patients a sense of optionality over medical procedures which is not common.
The interaction between Surgery Center of Oklahoma and society is a positive interaction. Patients are receiving professional medical and surgical procedures at an affordable price while only having to worry about the health and care of themselves. Surgery Center of Oklahoma surgeons make more net salary practicing at Surgery Center of Oklahoma than any other place because Surgery Center of Oklahoma found a way to take profit that a facility would receive and added the surgeon fee with what would have been the large profit in order run almost as a non-profitable organization but with a slight compensation. Surgery Center of Oklahoma has found a new way to do health care by successfully treat patients at an affordable cost without losing profit. It is a win for everyone involved in Surgery Center of Oklahoma.