Innovative New Tool Facilitates Healthcare Planning for New Yorkers 

September 26, 2017

FAIR Health has launched a groundbreaking new website, YouCanPlanForThis.org, designed to help transform how people in New York State plan for healthcare. FAIR Health developed the site by building on our existing, award-winning consumer website and mobile app, supported, in part, by a grant from the New York State Health Foundation (NYSHealth). This free site gives New Yorkers unparalleled access to medical and dental costs and comprehensive educational resources, so they can plan financially for a procedure or episode of care.

Site features include:

  • Cost estimates for medical or dental procedures. By entering their zip codes in the cost lookup tool, which is powered by FAIR Health’s database of billions of medical and dental claims, consumers can estimate their medical or dental expenses for particular procedures in their geographic areas. The site also offers estimates for negotiated in-network amounts for thousands of medical procedures, services and supplies, thereby allowing consumers who are enrolled in high-deductible health plans to use these amounts to manage their costs.
  • Costs of episodes of care. The new site also allows patients to research the total and itemized costs for 25 common “bundles” or episodes of care that involve multiple procedures related to a single medical condition, such as diabetes, or a planned procedure, such as a hip replacement—including care received both out of network and in network. Each episode of care is explained by an educational video.
  • Provider listings. For 100 frequently performed procedures in New York State, the site offers listings with information about providers’ education, hospital affiliations and prices, among other items
  • Educational curriculum. Educational resources on insurance cover topics such as the differences between HMO and PPO plans, the differences between emergency care and urgent care and questions to ask when choosing a health plan. The site also provides links to external resources and explains how to use established healthcare quality measures to make informed decisions about care.

A broad array of media and promotional activities are now underway to disseminate the site to New York healthcare consumers and promote its use.

In February 2018, FAIR Health will launch the second phase of the YouCanPlanForThis.org website with specific quality metrics and pricing information for common outpatient procedures performed in hospitals in four geographic regions in the state.

National Consumer Website Updated  FAIR Health has concurrently relaunched an updated version of our original consumer site, fairhealthconsumer.org, to provide on a national basis many of the features of the New York-based site. The national site now includes cost estimation for in-network as well as out-of-network rates for medical services, episodes of care and expanded educational resources.   FAIR Health Corporate Website Enhanced to Improve Stakeholder Access August 2017 saw the release of a completely retooled FAIR Health corporate website, fairhealth.org. Sharpening the focus on FAIR Health’s resources and audience-specific solutions, the enhanced site offers streamlined content and design and navigational elements that maximize its utility for the full range of stakeholders. 

For information about the revised FAIR Health websites—including licensing a private-label version of our national consumer site—contact us by e-mail at info@fairhealth.org or call us at 855-301-3247, Monday through Friday, 9 am to 6 pm ET.