A Window into FAIR Health Consumer Usage Statistics in 2021

February 17, 2022

In 2021, FAIR Health’s free, award-winning consumer website, fairhealthconsumer.org, enabled hundreds of thousands of insured and uninsured patients to estimate and plan for their healthcare expenditures. The addition of new tools and educational content generated the highest number of users FAIR Health Consumer has recorded since its launch over a decade ago. A study of year-end statistics for 2021, released as an infographic, provides insights into user demographics and search habits.

For the 10th consecutive year, FAIR Health and its consumer website won several eHealthcare Leadership Awards for being reliable sources of healthcare information. In 2021, FAIR Health received nine awards, the most ever, including the Mark Gothberg eHealthcare Organizational Commitment Award, the highest honor awarded.

Top Medical and Dental Search Terms
FAIR Health Consumer’s cost lookup tools allow consumers to estimate costs for medical and dental care by procedure and geographic location.

In 2021, the top five medical terms searched with the medical cost lookup tool were:

  1. Emergency room;
  2. Ultrasound;
  3. MRI;
  4. Anesthesia; and
  5. Speech.

“Emergency room,” “MRI,” and “speech” did not appear among the top five medical terms in 2020. “Ultrasound” climbed up the list from the fifth to the second most common term searched, and “anesthesia” dropped from third to fourth in the list.

In 2021, the top five dental terms searched were:

  1. Implant;
  2. Orthodontic;
  3. Root canal;
  4. Extraction; and
  5. Crown.

The top five dental terms in 2020 were similar, though “extraction” was new to the list this year. “Implant” topped the list in 2021, replacing “root canal” as the most searched dental term.

Age and Gender
Adults of all ages used FAIR Health Consumer in 2021, but the largest age group was that of people aged 25-34. This differed from 2020, when the largest age group was that of people aged 65 and older. The age breakdown of FAIR Health Consumer users in 2021 was:

  • 18-24: 17 percent;
  • 25-34: 26 percent;
  • 35-44: 18 percent;
  • 45-54: 16 percent;
  • 55-64: 13 percent; and
  • 65+: 11 percent.

In 2021, 59 percent of FAIR Health Consumer users were female, 41 percent male. Women have outnumbered men among FAIR Health Consumer users year over year.

Top User Locations
The top 10 states from which visits to FAIR Health Consumer originated in 2021 were:

  1. California;
  2. New York;
  3. Texas;
  4. Florida;
  5. Illinois;
  6. New Jersey;
  7. Georgia;
  8. Virginia;
  9. Pennsylvania; and
  10. North Carolina.

North Carolina was a new addition to the top consumer website user locations in 2021, replacing Ohio as the 10th most common state from 2020.

Most Popular Educational Topics
FAIR Health Consumer features a rich array of FH® Insurance Basics, which are original articles and videos that explain complex healthcare topics in easy-to-understand language. The most popular topics from this library in 2021 were:

  • Types of out-of-network reimbursement;
  • Estimating costs for a hospital stay;
  • How to review your medical bill;
  • Healthcare services not covered by health insurance; and
  • Negotiating your costs.

Top Shoppable Service Search Terms
In 2021, FAIR Health Consumer saw the addition of a shoppable services feature. This easy-to-use tool allows consumers to browse through and discover the costs of more than 300 shoppable services, using the same procedure codes that hospitals and healthcare providers use to bill for services. The top terms searched with the tool in 2021 were:

  1. Biopsy of the large bowel using an endoscope (colonoscopy);
  2. Treatment of speech, language, voice, communication and/or hearing processing disorder; and
  3. Psychotherapy, 60 minutes.

Most Frequently Visited Total Treatment Cost Bundles
FAIR Health Consumer’s medical cost lookup tool provides access to FH® Total Treatment Cost bundles. With these, users can view the typical costs for all components of care for certain chronic and acute conditions and event-based procedures. The most frequently visited bundles in 2021 were:

  • COVID-19 noncomplex inpatient;
  • Vaginal delivery;
  • Rheumatoid arthritis;
  • COVID-19 complex inpatient; and
  • C-section.

For an infographic with these statistics, click here.