Dive Brief:
- New research has found members who used UnitedHealthcare's online tool for estimating healthcare costs were more likely to choose a high-quality provider than members who did not use the tool.
- The UH tool, called myHealthcare Cost Estimator, lets members view pricing on specific treatment episodes and information on provider quality and cost. It's accessible via both the web and a mobile app.
- The study, which looked at data from more than 425,000 UnitedHealthcare members, found that almost 75% of the myHCE users chose providers who are listed as high quality, compared with about 68% of members who did not use the tool.
Dive Insight:
This study seems to suggest that offering consumers cost-saving tools can go a long way toward directing them to high-quality providers. In fact, UnitedHealthcare concluded that users of the myHCE tool got estimates for $2.8 billion of medical care, which would imply that such a tool could ultimately save big bucks by moving consumers in the right direction.
But there is some big fallacies buried in this discussion. First, researchers concluded that nearly 40% of myHCE users had high-deductible plans, and as one RAND study demonstrated, consumers with high deductible plans often put off or fail to obtain needed medical care. So any savings allegedly derived there is clearly, at least in part, not actually happening.
The other big fallacy here is that consumers are actually choosing providers who are genuinely higher-quality providers. Consider this: UnitedHealthcare itself got to choose what a "premium" physician was, which it defined as those who offered both quality and cost efficiency. And what is cost efficiency? Well, UH might define it differently, but looked at one way, cost efficiency means the providers gave the least care to each patient. So if their current program saves UH money, it's because they've managed to convince consumers to go to doctors and hospitals that spend less.
As long as payers get to do the rating, quality ratings for providers will always be suspect, as they have too much to gain by weighting low spending heavily in their quality mix.