Dive Brief:
- New Hampshire's Insurance Department last week launched an upgrade to its award-winning healthcare cost-comparison website.
- The changes include the addition of more procedures, as well as new data for pricing on dental care and prescription drugs. Other information includes lab tests, physical therapy, behavioral health, chiropractic care, sleep studies, and hospital quality comparisons, the Union leader reports. Mobile and tablet versions have also been added.
- The upgrade to NHHealthCost.org was effective as of last Thursday.
Dive Insight:
In the same week New Hampshire announced its continued progress on price transparency, with a site that began in 2007 and has seen numerous redesigns since, a Supreme Court decision made it less likely that other states will follow suit by ruling insurers can't be compelled by states to hand over the types of data on which New Hampshire's website depends.
The New Hampshire website utilizes real claims data from health insurers, which has apparently not been an issue in that state. "We’ve not seen any reluctance (by self-insured companies) to provide this information,” state Insurance Department Commissioner Roger Sevigny was quoted by the Union Leader. “So our hope is that [the ruling] really isn’t going to have much impact at all in New Hampshire.”
New Hampshire is just one of five states that currently provides a searchable healthcare price database, and was the only one of those to earn a top grade from industry organizations last year.