Survey: Healthcare price transparency tools underutilized
Managed Healthcare Executive’s 2017 Technology Survey findings reveal that tools to help consumers estimate the cost of healthcare may be underutilized. Here’s what UnitedHealthcare is doing about that.
Providing healthcare prices to consumers, healthcare professionals and other stakeholders could reduce U.S. healthcare spending by more than $100 billion during the next decade, according to a 2014
HankinsHowever, Managed Healthcare Executive’s 2017 Technology Survey found that 63.4% of the more than 120 respondents do not provide patients with tools to help them estimate the cost of healthcare services.
UnitedHealthcare is one health plan that is committed to providing access to quality and cost transparency resources, “an effort that will help improve the broader healthcare system and empower people to take charge of their health,” says Craig Hankins, vice president of digital products, UnitedHealthcare.
Hankins spoke to Managed Healthcare Executive about what tools they are using to accomplish this, the types of tools being used, and where quality fits in.
Q: When did UnitedHealthcare decide to start using tools to help consumers estimate healthcare costs?
Hankins: UnitedHealthcare has long recognized the importance and need for people to have access to information about the quality and cost of healthcare services. Our commitment to transparency stretches back more than 11 years to when we first introduced the Treatment Cost Estimator (TCE). Since then, we have invested significant time, money and creativity to develop new mobile and online resources that make it simple and easy for people to comparison shop for healthcare based on quality and cost.
The Health4Me app was launched in 2012 and has been downloaded more than 2 million times. UnitedHealthcare is currently revamping our online resource to combine quality and cost information into a singular search function that makes it easier and more convenient for people to access this important information, with early users of the integrated experience more than twice as likely to review cost information compared to users of the stand-alone healthcare provider search feature.
Between our online and mobile resources, the services provided more than $3.8 billion in cost estimates during 2015 to UnitedHealthcare plan participants.
Q: Tell us a little more about the tools are you using. What method has been the most effective?
Hankins: UnitedHealthcare members have access to quality and cost estimates via online and mobile resources. We know more consumers are using digital resources to comparison shop for healthcare. According to a
People can compare costs for more than 875 common medical services across nearly 600 health events, including inpatient and outpatient procedures. Estimates are available to UnitedHealthcare members and to the public through “guest versions” of the Health4Me app and online at