Hospital Stay: What You Should Know About Rising Medical Costs

Despite the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, which includes the expansion of coverage under the Medicaid program and increased protections for seniors on Medicare, health care costs continue to increase with no relief expected in the near future. 

Fortunately, patients can do many things either on their own or with the assistance of others, to greatly reduce the cost of a stay in the hospital. In some cases, reducing costs may come down to simple persistence by the patients themselves. 

Use Preventative Care

The first and most effective way to avoid expensive medical bills is to use preventative care to help your health. Make sure you have a good exercise regimen in place, and you get enough sleep each night. 

A simple change in lifestyle like a healthier diet and new fitness routine can mean the difference between contracting illnesses and being at risk for many more. When you feel you are getting sick, make sure you take time off to rest and recover.

Of course there are some things even preventative steps can’t foresee like an accident, rare disease, or genetic condition. In this case, it is best you follow some of the steps below to make sure you are covered. 

Do Some Hospital "Shopping"

The increase in medical costs have been linked to many factors, including the use of more expensive equipment to diagnose and treat ailments and larger settlements in malpractice cases. 

However, these issues do not fully account for the disparities in costs between hospitals that may be in close proximity.

Shopping for health care may not always be possible, but seeking the lowest costs for elective or anticipated procedures can greatly reduce your medical bill. One study showed that the cost of the same procedure in one hospital was 10 times that in a facility located in an adjacent community. 

Consider Negotiating the Cost

It is important to know the estimated cost of a particular procedure before trying to negotiate the price. This information is often available from insurance providers.
In the actual negotiations, you should mention any particular hardships. It may even be possible to negotiate the cost after the procedure has been performed.

Avoid Unnecessary Procedures

Lowering the cost of your treatment may be facilitated if you attempt to reduce or eliminate services that you and your doctor consider unnecessary to your situation. 

You may also consider having a particular procedure done on an outpatient basis. You should also make sure you were not billed for something that was not provided, such as the visit of a specialist that never took place.

Seek Help From Others

Your personal physician can provide you with considerable advice about medical procedures and their costs, but you may also consider turning to a medical billing advocate. 

These specialists can help ensure that you get what you pay for. In the event that you have been cheated or even physically harmed by a medical facility, you should consider turning to the services of a medical malpractice lawyer like McLaughlin & Lauricella, P.C.. 

An attorney can help ensure that your rights as a patient are protected, and you receive the financial compensation to which you may be entitled. 

Getting the treatment you need sometimes depends on the cost, but it shouldn’t have to. There are many ways you can lower medical bills and get a better price on insurance coverage or payment plans, you just have to know how to negotiate your case. 

Use these tips to help find a way to decrease your debts, while still getting the treatment and medicine you need.

Prioritize Now: Constructing Your Retirement Budget

Regardless of how old you are or how far along you've come in your career, prioritizing your retirement budget will help you plan for the future and save more over the course of your professional life. 

Doing so is especially important, as the average cost of living continues to rise and the threat of financial collapse could drain your retirement savings account. 

The following information will help you construct a solid retirement budget for the future.

Your Health: The Costs are Never Steady

Medicare might be around by the time you plan on retiring, but the program won't cover every medical checkup or procedure that you'll have in the future. The cost of medical care and medicine has drastically increased and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. To compensate for changes in healthcare costs, you should start saving an addition al 3 percent, or $300 per year.

The Big Variable: Housing Costs

While you may think that the cost of housing won't go up if you've already paid off your mortgage, think again. Your property taxes and homeowners insurance will likely fluctuate over time and you need to compensate for it. 

Make sure you choose a reputable mortgage lender, so you can plan ahead for your future housing costs. If you're already saving $10,000 per year, consider adding an additional 2 percent, or $200, every year to compensate for housing changes. 

Decreased Costs in Transportation

When you retire, you most likely won't be driving as much or going out as much as you do now. While this means that there will be an overall decrease in retirement expenses, you should continue to save the same amount of money. 

Unexpected expenses could occur at any moment. Create your transportation budget based on the vehicles you expect to operate, your location and driving habits, and the costs of public transportation in your area.

Food Expenses Can Increase or Decrease

Retired individuals normally eat less in terms of the actual amount of food they put into their bodies, but many elderly folks need to have food that is part of a special diet. To make sure your food expenses are properly covered, add an additional 2 percent, or $200 to your yearly retirement budget. 

Research various dietary budgeting strategies to pinpoint which one works best for your household’s food consumption habits. Don’t forget to take into account any future additions to your household that you will need to provide food for.

Your Family: Gifts and Vacations

Most retired individuals yearn to do two things—relax and travel. The norm for most elderly individuals is to go on vacation at least once a year for one or two weeks at a time. 

Many even decide to go on extended trips for a month or more. At the same time, you must take into account monetary and physical gifts that you'll likely be handing out to your children and grandchildren in the future. No one wants to be the scrooge of the family.

To account for both annual vacations and monetary gifts to the family, add an additional 5 percent, or $500 to the retirement pot. When you add all of this up, over the course of 30 years, you will save an additional $36,000. When you pile on 5 percent interest and the $10,000 you've already saved, your retirement account will be much improved. 

Retirement Budget

The best way to construct a retirement and savings budget is to tally every living expense early on and drop the additional monetary amount into an interest-bearing 401(k) or pension plan to maximize your funds for the future.

Retirement Budget Templates and Sample Worksheets

• Quick Retirement Planning Budget Worksheet
• Retirement Budget Planner
• Retirement Planning Budget Worksheet 
• Retirement Planning Budget Worksheet

How to Successfully Cut Your Business Costs

Business organizations can make approx. 20% savings by focusing on the reduction of operating expenses that are not related to the ‘core’ business. The key points when it comes to the cost reduction are the following:

- Reducing the number of employees should be the last resort for business organizations

- Everyone in the company should be cost-conscious

- Ensure that your suppliers are aware of the amount of money you are willing to spend and closely associated with your initiative to reduce costs

With this kind of thinking and planning, efficient cost cut can be achieved by controlling different aspects of business that are easily accepted by both employees and company’s clientele.

Reduce costs with flexible employment strategy

In the case of adapting working hours to the available volume of work, regular overtime in a given period of the week, introducing young people to the job, preparing for retirement, combining of professional and family life, working part-time can be of mutual benefit to employers and workers. 

Thus, the contract may only be concluded for the time required by the employer's needs - from 1 to 39 hours per week. Working hours can be deployed in a way that the worker only works one day a week, which certainly contributes to cost reduction.

Reduction of working time, whether it’s on weekly basis or due to distribution of work so that there are some ‘no-work’ periods, with a corresponding reduction in pay, or voluntary switching to part-time jobs, reduce costs and retain existing jobs. 

There should be mutual benefits for both employers and employees – employee still earns more even with reduced pay than when unemployed, and still has pension insurance; the employer doesn’t have to spend money on severance payments, and in the case of two employees sharing one job, the completed work is more effective than the work of one employee working full hours, with secured replacement in case of absence of one of them.

Lower hidden IT costs

Many organizations have hidden IT costs. Over the years, these hidden costs can increase, particularly where IT is not able to respond to business needs. These costs often represent mini-projects, non-standard software, hardware or tools used in business. 

Users often establish emotional connection with the solutions that they've created. Hidden IT costs are often in places where it is not easy to predict IT budget. Although it is not exactly easy, IT must identify, analyze and reduce these hidden costs without affecting the business value that they bring. 

IT must work to absorb these tools in standard IT environment and budget in order to manage, utilize and reduce costs.

There are many new ways to deliver IT services: outsourcing, cloud computing, SaaS, PaaS, IaaS, etc. The key is to have an open strategy for these new ways. As new features become available, check what savings can be made by applying or adopting one or more of these options. 

It’s wrong to assume that the way in which you have worked so far is the best. Many of these changes have an emotional component, but certainly they must be objectively reviewed. Revise costs and impact on services important to business goals to bring adequate decision which of these options is right. 

For example, the use of CRM as SaaS model may bring savings in terms of servers, software, infrastructure, human resources, etc. To be on the safe side, revise this option carefully because you might need it for other things.

Save up on your company vehicle

Choosing a quality car is an advantage from the start. Latest technology is used to create superior products with low fuel consumption and chemical values, which greatly reduces the registration cost as well.

When it comes to diesel refueling turn to quality again, for thrifty and long-term operating vehicle. Match engine needs with octane fuel rating. It is known that the fuel with a higher octane rating burn a little slower, which means that your car will spend less, have more power and go faster for the same amount of fuel.

Reduce unnecessary routes and optimize fuel consumption. Plan your trips to reduce costs and to get the best possible performance out of your vehicle. You can get a loyalty card and save on the fuel price even more.

Create a mind-set within your business organization where all of your employees would control costs, starting from the lowest-ranking employees up to the top management. 

Business Costs

Look forward to any reduction in business costs as much as you look forward to every business success. It is important that you start to worry about the costs before the situation becomes critical so that you won’t be required to make difficult decisions.

How to Break Down the Competition in Four Steps and Make your Brand Stand Out

Have you ever wondered why Google, Apple or Facebook are so popular and at the top of their industries? Hard work. This is an answer. 

Creating a website is not enough anymore. Specific marketing strategies are needed to be and stay successful in your field. Generally speaking, there are four strategies which will help you create a unique image of your brand.

Less is more

The first marketing strategy you have to develop is the foundation on which you will build the rest of them. Find one problem customers around you are facing. Find the solution to the problem. Market your business and make your brand stand out. 

Being an expert in one field is one thing, but being the Jack of all trade is something completely different. Do not scatter your efforts on an assortment of business ventures. Focus on one thing so that you can find the easiest solution your customers desperately need. 

Research the market. Find the hole which needs to be filled and fill it with your expertise.

Market yourself as an expert

This advice is closely related to the previous one. By concentrating all your efforts on solving one problem in industry, you will market yourself as an expert. As potential customers notice how much time you spent to educate yourself for this specific field and how much work and dedication it took you to be at the top in your field, they will begin to trust you.

However, gaining trust is not an easy task. The first thing you can do is to visit answers sites. Help people who have problems in your field. Not only will you sell yourself as an expert, but answers sites gives you the opportunity to insert a link to your website, too. 

You can also join discussions on LinkedIn, find your niche audience and start finding questions you can give answers to. There is one crucial advise here. Build trust and do not act as if your only goal was to sell your products/services. Provide some links to articles which can help them. 

You can choose articles you written, but choosing the ones written by other experts in the field will be more beneficial. Write specific answers so that a questioner can really solve his/her problem. One more thing. 

Giving partial answers so that a questioner has to get in touch with you is something you should definitely avoid. 

Make your brand stand out visually

Create unique business cards. If you decide that visiting trade fairs and conferences is your marketing strategy, always have your business cards with you. Apart from cards, you will also need packaging if you sell products, stationery, promotional materials and signage.

We will focus our attention now to signage as an effective marketing strategy. Take advantage of it as you will credit half of your success to this strategy. When it comes to a professional team, we recommend a business signs Brisbane since it is one of the largest signage franchise in the world. 

The way business signs Brisbane stand out in a sea of the competition is their offer. Custom stickers, flags, hoardings, mesh banners, billboards, free standing signs or vehicle signage. Just name it.

For all of these marketing strategies, you need a logo. It is the most important part of your business representation which influences how above mentioned materials will look like. Avoid using free logos you can find online. You need a unique, distinctive, one of a kind logo which perfectly represents your business with only a few colours and graphic touches. 

A logo should last at least ten yours, so shelling out more money than you expected is small price to pay for a logo which will last a decade. You can find a professional design firm or you can hire an independent designer you trust. Bear in mind that there are a host of professional independent designer in industry who charge less than a firm does.

Make your brand stand out online

Creating a blog as a part of your website is the excellent way for selling yourself as an expert. Facebook and Twitter accounts where you can build a rapport with your customers is a must. These social media accounts provide you with a possibility to reach out to the audience all over the world. 

We have mentioned LinkedIn as a method for finding questions you can answer to help your potential customers. However, LinkedIn has one more specific feature crucial for your business success. Recommendations. Individuals or companies can recommend you to a potential client. 

They can even explain why there are recommending you, not someone else. It is also another way to build trust with your customers.

Make your brand stand out

Be the professional whatever you are doing. There is no a shadow of a doubt you will succeed with marketing strategies we mentioned.