[quote=Coronita]
Oh, I wish I was kidding. I’m pretty sure that $700 MRI wasn’t the MRI that I need to get…
And I was wrong. $15,000 was what it was maybe a few years ago…
[/quote]
The MRI spec looks the same, the location I visited was different. I had mine in early 2008. Late 2008 was when UCSDs MRI supposedly came on line. Sharp had already had theirs for a while (cost might have been run off). I also think that Sharp was doing MRIs for different Hospitals at the time. Their machine was nearly booked up.
My MRI took a while, they were looking for an obstruction in the biliary tree. There was a sequence of several images using different spin decays and freq. They also used a very large amount of contrast (almost all the machine could hold). Somewhere around in this mess I call an office space, there is a copy of the MRI on CD/DVD. I had asked for the ‘take home package’. ;-P
On my billing, the Physician Services was not done at Sharp, but the actual MRI was.
There is not much difference in type of MRIs. One of the big differences is the physician work on analyzing the image. From a Physics point of view, MRIs are simple.. but the sensing mechanism on them is tricky. Very simply, the MRI pulls all the dipole atoms in the body into alignment, then a perpendicular electro-magnet fires effectively pulling the dipole atoms and causing them to precess within the primary magnetic field (I like to consider it ‘plucking’ the diapoles). The MRI listens to the cacophony of precessing dipoles and figures out where each signal comes from. The pulling magnet is the grid or structure they put over your chest, abdomen, head – or wherever they are sensing (some MRIs have these ‘integrated’ into the MRI). The amount of energy required to pull/tip is why that part of the MRI gets warm during the MRI. The big, main magnet is the doughnut shaped device you are inserted into. It is also the part that makes it dangerous to have metal on you. The coils inside are bathed in liquid nitrogen to get the wiring of the magnet to be a near superconductor. The main magnet is never turned off during the time the MRI is installed. It take a long time to power up (very high inductance).
I do know that what the insurance actually pays, and what the actual cost is varies greatly from what a person’s bill shows. So much for transparency and consistency in medical billing. Current google lookup shows amounts between $680 to $1750 for abdominal MRI.
[quote=Coronita]They generally knock you out so you don’t even remember it, unless you are like me, when you insist you only want to do a light sedation because you want to stay awake while they are doing the lower one because you think it’s cool and interesting…[/quote]
I tend to want to be conscious during a procedure… partially because of curiosity.. and partially because I refuse to surrender my consciousness…
In terms of qualities of doctors/surgeons.. etc I wholeheartedly agree.
