Hospital Information Added to New York Consumer Website

February 15, 2018

On February 1, FAIR Health added hospital-specific pricing for 20 common outpatient procedures with specified quality metrics for a subset of New York hospitals to YouCanPlanForThis.org, our consumer website for New York State residents. The hospitals are located in Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse and Westchester.

The measures of hospital quality include information on:

• Complications;
• Emergency room timeliness;
• Hospital-acquired infections at surgical sites; and
• Readmissions to the hospital within 30 days after a heart attack, heart surgery or hip or knee surgery.

The site also features new educational content, including a video, to help consumers understand how to use information about quality metrics when choosing a hospital for care.

FAIR Health debuted our next-generation consumer healthcare transparency site last September to transform the way in which New York consumers plan for their healthcare costs. The site was funded in part by a grant from the New York State Health Foundation. The new hospital information on YouCanPlanForThis.org supplements the site’s existing features, which include:

• Cost lookup tools that enable consumers to estimate in-network and out-of-network costs for thousands of medical procedures in their geographic areas, and out-of-network costs for dental procedures (estimated in-network costs for dental procedures are due to be launched later this year);
• Total and itemized in-network and out-of-network costs for 25 common episodes of care (e.g., diabetes treatment, hip surgery, pregnancy);
• Individual provider listings for 100 frequently performed procedures, including information specific to providers’ practices and prices; and
• A rich educational curriculum with articles on insurance basics, a glossary, videos, resource links and information on healthcare quality measures.

Last fall, YouCanPlanForThis.org was singled out as an “excellent consumer website” in the Altarum and Catalyst for Payment Reform’s Price Transparency & Physician Quality Report Card 2017.

The site is powered by data from the nation’s largest collection of private healthcare claims data, which now includes over 25 billion claim records contributed by payors and administrators who insure or process claims for private insurance plans covering more than 150 million individuals.

Encouraged by the success of New York’s YouCanPlanForThis.org, which was based on FAIR Health’s award-winning national consumer site, fairhealthconsumer.org, other states have approached FAIR Health with interest in how they can offer similar healthcare cost planning solutions for their constituents.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd said: “We are pleased to add another layer of cost and quality transparency to a website dedicated to helping New Yorkers take control of their healthcare planning. We hope YouCanPlanForThis.org can serve as a model for states across the nation.”

To learn more about how YouCanPlanForThis.org can help consumers plan for healthcare expenses, register for the free one-hour webcast FAIR Health will host on March 1 from 12 to 1 pm ET.