Making the Most of Your Health Care Dollars: Comparison Shopping By: Shelly Fisher, Benefits Manager Every day we make important decisions that affect our family’s health and health-related financial security. Making these choices can be stressful and overwhelming, especially if a family member is sick and the medical services are expensive! Often, it may seem like you don’t have a choice when faced with the cost of medical procedures, but that is not always the case. Many consumers today are taking more responsibility for their health care, which includes researching more information about the cost of health services and making informed decisions regarding their care. Comparison Shopping Consumer-driven health care, or consumerism, revolves around the idea that consumers should be able to make informed choices about their medical care based on price and quality information. Then well-informed health care consumers can compare prices—choosing more wisely and ultimately lowering overall health care costs for everyone. We would never purchase a car or TV without comparison shopping. But his type of apples-to-apples comparison is almost impossible in the United States right now when it comes to health care expenses. Generally, the prices of health care services are not made public, making comparison shopping seem impossible. For realistic comparison shopping between hospitals, for example, you need to know in advance what the bottom line price would be for an all-inclusive bill, including hospital and physician fees. However, it’s hard to hunt for bargains when the prices of various tests, treatments and procedures differ significantly depending on a variety of factors, such as the type of health insurance you have, whether you have surgery at a hospital or freestanding surgery center, and whether your surgeon or anesthesiologist participates in your health plan’s network. One goal of price transparency in health care is to help you have an easier time determining which providers have the lowest prices. Good information on provider quality is also important, so consumers aren’t compelled to simply choose the “cheapest” alternative, but rather make choices that provide the best quality health care for the best value. No matter how complex or simple, we all have healthcare needs. From finding a doctor to solving a billing problem, getting straight answers can seem impossible at times. If you are enrolled in Melton’s medical plan, you have Compass – Compass Professional Health Services – to serve as your personal healthcare advisor. Their mission is to help you understand and reap the full benefits from your healthcare benefits. The service is simple to use and available to you now. Here is just a sampling of the services Compass provides: • Insider information on saving money • Unbiased doctor recommendations • Hospital cost and quality information • Straight answers about your benefits • Bill reconciliation • Complete advisor for your healthcare Take Action Today If you want to be a health care bargain hunter, but don’t know where to start, use Compass to begin the task of comparison shopping. Contact Compass to help point you in the right direction. Melton’s Health Care Professional is Kelly, her number is (800) 513-1667 ext. 601 and email is kellyc@compassphs
Posted on: Fri, 31 Jan 2014 14:29:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015