Costs of Care, a nonprofit that helps caregivers provide high-value care, has selected four winners of the third annual essay contest. These stories, from every corner of the United States, will help expand the public discourse on the role of doctors, nurses, and other care providers in controlling healthcare costs.

With the help of New England Journal of Medicine Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Drazen, former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala, former White House advisor and bioethicist Zeke Emanuel, and New York Times columnist and surgeon Pauline Chen, Costs of Care (www.CostsOfCare.org) launched an innovative essay contest this Fall aimed at elucidating both the challenges and opportunities to save patientsʼ money with routine, cost conscious medical decisions.

Costs of Care gathered more than 150 personal stories from patients, nurses, and doctors across the nation. The following submissions were selected as finalists:

1. -- Robbie Fenster (Rhode Island), a Brown University psychiatry resident describes the power of the “need to know” and the challenge of talking to a patient about an unnecessary and expensive MRIp
2. -- Erin Plute (Georgia), an Emory medical student discusses the challenge of being an informed patient and how getting a second opinion helped her personally avoid an unnecessary CT scanp
3. -- James Bliwas (Ohio), the brother of a cancer patient who preferred to die at home describes his struggle to obtain insurance coverage for a visiting nurse
4. -- Benjamin Robbins (Massachusetts), a Harvard Medical Student describes a patient he encountered in the emergency room who declines a CT scan after not being able to find out what it will cost

For all contest details, click here. And keep an eye out for next year's deadline!