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Social Media Empowers Consumers
04/29/2013 - Gone are the days where the only place one could learn about his/her disease or injury was within the four walls of the treating physician’s office. Social media will continue to be a powerful tool for the empowered consumer looking for information about their doctors and diseases.
HealthCare Consumerism Radio: Torben Nielsen, General Manager, Healthsparq
04/24/2013 - Hosts Brent Macy, Managing Director with The Institute for HealthCare Consumerism (IHC), and Ron Bachman, Chairman of the Editorial Advisory Board, speak with Torben Nielsen, General Manager with HealthSparq. Torben speaks on how transparency drives increased consumerism and how this, in turn, can lead to cost reductions.
American Health Care Costs Higher for Many Standard Procedures
04/04/2013 - ConnectYourCare News: Dependable medical assistance is crucial for Americans, but many people could face higher-than-average medical bills if they need various health care procedures.
The Best Health Care Decision is Realizing That There Are Choices
03/26/2013 - I empathize with people who don’t take an active role in their health care decisions. There are real barriers to any of us really getting engaged: limited information about price and quality, a perpetuated culture of “doctor knows best,” and a daunting and confusing set of rules about coverage. Who
Separating Politics from Health Care Choices: Key “Purple” Messages for All Consumers [Event]
03/06/2013 - Two members of the Institute for HealthCare Consumerism's League of Leaders will be holding a roundtable discussion on health care consumerism with Altarum Institute and the National Coalition on Health Care on March 26, 2013 in the nation's capital.
Some States Will Rate Health Plans On Quality This Fall
03/05/2013 - KHN: This fall, health insurers in a few states will be seeing stars. Not the celestial kind, but stars that reflect their scores on quality measures designed to help consumers make better-informed decisions about what coverage to buy.
Harvard Pilgrim Calculator Helps Monitor Health Care Costs
02/13/2013 - New Hampsire Union Leader: Massachusetts-based health plan Harvard Pilgrim collaborates with recognized transparency innovators Castlight Health to launch online cost and quality calculator tool for its health plan members.
Need A Price For A Hip Replacement? Good Luck With That
02/12/2013 - Kaiser Health News/NPR: Researchers from Iowa called 20 top-rated orthopedic hospitals across the country using a script for a hip implant. They asked for the lowest price (everything included) for a total hip replacement. The prices obtained varied widely: from a low of $11,100 to more than $125,000.
UBA Releases Advisor Evaluation Resources to Provide Employers Tools to Combat Rising Costs
01/28/2013 - United Benefit Advisors (UBA) released an employee benefit advisor evaluation tool kit to provide human resource professionals and business owners the valuable information they need to understand how strategic benefits planning can help achieve optimum value and long-term cost management, especially in the face of the Patient Protection and Affordable
Why Employers Should Stop Worrying About Health Costs
01/15/2013 - A report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) on high-value health care attracted attention when it was issued last June. Authored by a group of eleven leading hospital executives, A CEO Checklist for High-Value Health Care describes programs at various hospitals that resulted in quality improvements and lowered costs. The
A Renaissance Man: Young's a Crusader for Health Care Consumerism
01/08/2013 - Minneapolis this week, Boston the next, a layover in Atlanta and then it’s off to Dallas and then hitting the West Coast for meetings in Phoenix, Los Angeles and Seattle. That is not the itinerary for the last leg of a U2 tour. It is just another business trip for
Health Care Predictions For A New Year
01/02/2013 - KHN reporters preview some of the big issues coming this year: The fight over controlling spending and what it means for Medicare; state decisions on health law implementation; and changing how hospitals and doctors are paid.
Priceline for Health? PokitDok Launches on Mobile
01/02/2013 - One of the latest startups aiming to bring comparison shopping to health, PokitDok this week launched a new mobile app that lets consumers search for local healthcare and wellness providers to find prices that match their budgets.
More Americans Using Mobile Phones to Look up Health Information
11/12/2012 - Here's the latest rundown of mobile application usage in health care from a survey by the Pew Research Center's Internet and the American Life Project and the California Healthcare Foundation: Of the 3,014 adults surveyed between Aug. 7 and Sept. 6, 85 percent own some form of mobile phone, and
When Someone Else Pays, Employees Simply Care Less (And Spend More)
11/12/2012 - Summary: Protecting people from financial responsibility for health care exposes them to risks by encouraging them to remain uninvolved in care decisions. Payment decisions cannot be separated from care decisions because true ownership requires control of both. It's critical that employers understand how plan design can encourage employees to be
Employers and Consumers Deserve Transparency into Health Care Costs
11/09/2012 - We take it for granted that we know the cost of most things we buy ahead of time. Because of consumer protection laws, price tags are prominently displayed when we go to buy a car or a gallon of gas. Can you imagine a grocery store refusing to tell you
Bringing Telemedicine to the Workplace
11/09/2012 - Diabetic employees of a wood products company in Guilford, Maine, had the opportunity last month to sit down for one-to-one consultations with a world-class diabetes specialist from Tufts Medical Center in Boston.
Business Health Care Group selects Best Doctors® to assist consumers in health care decision-making
10/23/2012 - In its ongoing efforts to assist consumers in making better health care decisions, the Business Health Care Group (BHCG) has entered into an agreement with Best Doctors, Inc., a Boston-based global health company, to offer Best Doctors’ innovative consumer health care decision making program, to both BHCG self-funded (effective immediately)
Why Aren’t Health Care Prices Ever on The Table?
09/17/2012 - Journalist-turned investment banker-turned auto bailout czar Steven Rattner provocatively calls for “not quite” death panels in an op-ed in today’s New York Times. Noting a quarter of all Medicare spending comes in the last year of life, he writes:
