Patent ID: 8457987

Claim:
A medical shared savings system, comprising: a data store that stores medical plan information for a medical plan associated with a patient, and that stores pricing data for a medical procedure under a medical savings plan, the pricing data including a cost of the medical procedure offered in the United States according to the medical plan and a cost of the medical procedure offered in one or more regions outside of the United States, the pricing data including travel costs; and a medical shared savings unit that interacts with one or more computing devices and the data store via a communications network, the medical shared savings unit receiving a selection from one of the one or more computing devices to select the medical procedure as part of the medical savings plan, and calculating a savings based on a difference between the cost of the medical procedure performed in a patient-selected region outside of the United States and the cost of the medical procedure performed within the United States, the medical shared savings unit dividing the savings based on a medical savings plan model when the patient undergoes the medical procedure in the patient-selected region outside of the United States, the medical savings plan model designating less than half of the savings for the patient using one of a tax-exempt account and a direct cash payment to the patient.