Managed Healthcare Executive - February 2009 - (Page 27) { TECHNOLOGY } Transparency efforts evolve to include total cost of services These initiatives should encourage consumers to make educated choices, as well as help providers contain costs BY DAVID BENNETT W David Bennett is a senior editor in Advanstar Communication’s Centralized Content Group. stakeholders have made progress, there’s still much work to do. “The biggest impediment to e ective consumerism in healthcare is that information on cost and quality is complex, problematic, and often di cult to understand,” Drozdowski says. “Transparency can reconnect the consumers with the true cost of care and motivate them to spend more wisely.” Transparency has evolved to include the disclosure of more itemized costs—not just the price of a major surgical procedure or hospital stay, as in early e orts, but the costs of related lab tests, drugs and other services. But as Drozdowski says, such information still remains di cult for consumers to decipher. WellPoint announced plans in December to partner with four other Blue Cross Blue Shield plans to provide online, consumer-friendly cost information from various providers. The portal will include cost ranges for speci c procedures, as well as for speci c hospitals, so members can compare the di erences HEN IT COMES TO PRICE trans- in costs. The move is an extension of parency in healthcare, the bandwagon an existing program that includes 18 is getting crowded. As transparency gains separate Blue plans. traction among health plans, employers and public WellPoint’s newest partners are Blue plans, it’s also relying almost exclusively on the Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota, Internet to reach consumers. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, Aetna, CIGNA, Humana, Blue Cross and Blue Premera Blue Cross of Washington, and Shield and UnitedHealth Group provide online Highmark Inc. in Pennsylvania. The pricing tools that o er consumers data on hospital Blue plans provide the estimated cost charges and readmission rates, estimated cost for ranges of 39 medical procedures perspeci c procedures, and pricing data on the most formed in various locations. common Medicare services. In 2006, WellPoint and employer Colin Drozdowski, vice president of healthcare General Motors Corp. in Ohio initially management for WellPoint Inc. says even though began the transparency e ort for GM FEBRUARY 2009 Stockbyte/Getty Images 27
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