The President’s Executive Order Demands Healthcare Cost Transparency We have long chronicled the huge price swings that often exist among healthcare providers in the same locales. To combat this situation and help patients find low cost, high-quality care, the President recently signed an executive order directing HHS to develop rules requiring hospitals to publish clear [...]
CMS Administrator Seema Verma calls the new rule a small step. We couldn’t agree more! According to recent reports, what was touted as a giant step for healthcare cost transparency has turned out to be little more than a puzzle few can solve. The rule, which took effect on January 1, 2019, requires that hospitals [...]
Can the cost of a hip replacement in Philadelphia really vary from $11,000 to $125,000? From white papers to published books, much has been written about how difficult it can be to find out what a hospital stay or outpatient procedure will cost. And as Anna Wilde Mathews observed in her article Lifting the Veil [...]
This article was published on July 17, 2018 on Employee Benefit News, written by John Kern. Photo Source: Employee Benefit News. In my 25 years in the insurance business I’ve seen many changes. But there’s always been one constant: Healthcare and pharmacy costs continue to accelerate and no regulatory action has been able to slow [...]
When a plan member was referred recently to a New York area physician for a sleep study, she took it upon herself to compare costs at other facilities. Her research quickly showed that the provider’s price of $4,302 was much higher than the “fair” price of $1,300 available at another facility in her area. By [...]
The trend from volume-based to value-based medical care is intended to change the focus from individual units of care to the overall health of a patient or a patient population. In very simple terms, value-based care is intended to bring cost and quality together. For payers, it means moving from traditional fee-for-service reimbursement to an [...]
Diversified Group offers RealTimeChoices – an app accessible via website or mobile device that allows plan members to shop for and identify fair prices for healthcare services they need. This healthcare cost transparency tool also lets plan members find doctors or providers in their local area who offer that service along with quality ratings and patient [...]
