It’s time to elevate the healthcare and insurance IQ of the American Healthcare Consumer.
Hopefully they are familiar with the terms the ‘industry’ felt was important for them to know such as deductible, copay, coinsurance, out-of-pocket costs. These are the terms they encounter when they utilize the increasingly inept benefits put before them.
The important terms they encounter each day, that significantly impact the cost and quality of healthcare, are now an integral component if they hope to take control and build a high-performance plan.
Today’s conversation focuses on Healthcare Steerage…a significant reason why employer plan sponsors and their members are overpaying for medical care. Health Systems now loom large over communities and use their leverage to upsell services by steering services (sometimes completely unnecessary care) into the facilities owned by the ‘system’ rather than significantly lower cost options by equivalent or better quality facilities.
Since healthcare has become intentionally complex, patients follow the guidance of their doctors blindly without advance access to the cost and quality of the care or even knowing whether the care is appropriate. This contributes significantly to medical debt, care avoidance and increased premiums; because as we all know…higher claims means higher premiums and higher out-of-pocket costs.