A while ago I posted on how I was trying Checkster.com as a tool for doing a 360 degree evaluation. It seemed like a great tool, although it also seemed like it had some odd limitations, namely a maximum of 10 people can be invited, at least 3 have to respond before you can see any results, and there is a 7-day limit on time to respond.

The bottom line is that this doesn’t work very well. 10 people max with a minimum of 3 to see results means you have to have a 30% response rate, which is pretty darned high. For example, my experience with Linkedin is that about 10% of the people I invite, who I know, who I’ve personally invited in person with an explanation of what Linkedin is actually join. Expecting 30% of the people who receive an email asking them to spend 5 minutes describing a coworker’s strengths and weaknesses to actually follow through is extremely optimistic. Unless, of course, you only invite folks who are your friends or who work for you, but then what’s the point?

The 7-day limit is also silly. A week is not very long, especially in summer when folks are on vacation. A month or even 90 days would be much better.

Lastly, while there is a “resend email” button for each person you’ve invited, you have to do each one manually. That’s a heck of a lot of work.

Here’s what Checkster needs to have to be a real tool with real usefulness:

1. Ability to invite more people. One hundred would be a good start. Let us upload the list in .csv format.
2. Send tickler emails automatically every week to those invited to respond, with an option for the individual receiving the invitation to say they’re opting out.
3. Ninety day limit on checkups rather than the 7 days they have now. If the fear is that too many checkups will be going on, then limit us to two per year.
4. This may already exist - I wouldn’t know because I haven’t gotten a checkup to complete - but give us a link to the results that we can send to others.

In the mean time, does anyone know of a tool that has these features?

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We’ve been on and off the phone with Lowe’s and their contractor, and one of the things we agreed to recently was that we could come to the store and pick out a replacement cabinet for the one that got broken during the floor installation. Last weekend we decided to take them up on that.

We decided to get ClosetMaid shelving instead, because it’s a small dark space we’re filling, and we thought we’d get more storage and it would be easier to use. The price turned out to be a wash, but it didn’t really matter. All we had to do was gather up the stuff we needed, bring it to the service counter, and Lowe’s took care of it.

After a bit of installation the shelves were up and being stocked. Our instincts were right - they are a huge improvement over what we’d had, for less money than it would have taken to replace the original cabinet.

We’ve got a date picked out for the reinstallation of the floor, and we’ve agreed on how to fix the damaged molding. All that’s left is the damage on the hardwood floor, but we’ren ot sure what to do about that.

While this got off to a rocky start, both Lowe’s and their contractor Premier Professional Services have been following up and interested to get it resolved.

Here’s a very simple way to reduce healthcare costs: Make sure everyone involved knows the cost of whatever is being done before it is done.

For example, my 1-year old daughter had E. Coli recently. Actually, she still has it. It wasn’t a bad infection and she didn’t face serious health risks because she fought it pretty well. But she had residual diarrhea long enough that we took her to the doctor and submitted stool samples. It took a few days, but the results came back - E. Coli. Our daughter was in fine spirits, and other than very mild diarrhea you’d never guess she was even slightly ill. Even so Wisconsin law says she cannot go back to daycare until she has two negative stool samples.

It costs us about $30 a day for daycare, and every day she’s not in daycare it’s $30 to hold the daycare spot and a day’s wages. So, you’d think you’d want to test her stool every day to see if it was clear, right?

Maybe. My father came to visit and that really reduced the cost of having her at home. We also don’t know what each test is costing us. If they cost $1,500, and our insurance company covers 90% that’s $150 per test. Each set is two tests, and that equals 10 days of daycare. Given that it takes 4 days to get the results from each test, then it makes sense to wait for the results of each test before re-testing.

But what if the tests were only $50 each? Then it’s $10 for each set, and then it makes more sense to test more often.

So I thought I’d call my insurance company to find out what the test cost. They can’t tell me. They explain that they have special negotiated rates with each provider, and for that reason they cannot tell me what the test will cost. At all. Although, the guy did finally admit that it was rare to see a lab test over “a few hundred dollars.” Then we heard from the lab people that when we submit a sample that actually about 10 actual tests are preformed. Great! Now we don’t know whether a lab test is actually just a few hundred bucks, or a set of 10 or so tests at a few hundred each. Grrrr….

So I call the hospitals “Pricing Line”, which is supposed to be the place where you can find out what things cost. Well, if you wait a day or so for them to call you back you can. The gentleman explained that the base price for the test was in fact $190, but that insurance companies typically cover $125 to $150 of that. Hmmm…doesn’t seem like the 90% my insurance company told me, but it’s not hugely expensive relative to 4 days of daycare, so we go on testing.

But what struck me was how nobody really knew what this test would actually cost. The insurance company, hospital, doctors and nurses were all ignorant of what the charges would be. No wonder medical costs are spiraling. When nobody has any idea what things cost there’s no reason to control those costs.

What if there was a requirement that before any procedure or test would be conducted the patient and the doctor were made aware of the total charge and the out-of-pocket charge for the patient?