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September 16, 2006
As Health Costs Rise, Health Savings Account Owners Must Get Smarter
As more companies offer Health Savings Account (HSA) plans to their workers, a leading proponent of the trend says that employers also must help patients become smarter shoppers for care.
Companies that successfully deliver both halves of the equation -- offering the HSA insurance policies and providing good information about the cost and quality of medical services -- will help bring true "consumerism" to health care, said Ann Mond Johnson, president of Subimo LLC, during an address to the annual health care symposium sponsored by the Pittsburgh Business Group on Health.
"You don't do it just because of the dollars," said Ms. Johnson during a speech to more than 300 people registered for the Downtown meeting at the Marriott City Center. "You do it because it's the right thing."
Ms. Johnson's company, of course, makes a business out of trying to give such information to consumers. In April, Highmark Inc., the region's largest health insurer, announced that its member Web site would begin displaying information about hospital quality as compiled by Subimo.
The Chicago company pulls information from publicly-available reports, such as those published by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council. It also provides information on how often different hospitals perform a given procedure, which can be an indicator of quality.
A slide that Ms. Johnson displayed, for example, showed that the Cleveland Clinic performed more than five times as many heart valve replacement and repair surgeries as Allegheny General Hospital and West Penn Hospital. While acknowledging that it is difficult to provide comprehensive quality information about many types of medical care -- there are more than 160 variables that affect the quality of any given heart valve replacement surgery, she estimated -- Ms. Johnson predicted a day will come when consumers book their surgeries much as they do airline flights on Orbitz.com.
"As you put this information out there, you will see consumers starting to shop," she said.
The move to consumerism in health care is happening as social values are changing about personal responsibility for health risks, Ms. Johnson said. The share of people who think it's OK for employers to publicly declare they won't hire smokers, for example, is growing, she said, adding that similar opposition could be building against obesity.
The share of companies offering high-deductible health plans has steadily increased in recent years, with 33 percent of employers surveyed this year by the National Business Group on Health saying they plan on offering some version of the insurance product in 2007. But Kim Bellard, a vice president with Highmark, said the adoption of Health Savings Accounts in the local market has been slower. A local survey this year by Cowden Associates, a Downtown benefits and actuarial firm, suggested that about 11 percent of companies here offered high deductible health plans between July 2005 and April 2006.
Health Savings Account plans will continue to grow as more information on healthcare becomes availble to make wise consumer decisions. Learn more about Health Savings Accounts at: http://www.health--savings--accounts.com
Posted by Wiley Long at September 16, 2006 09:37 AM
Comments
I have the right to believe that they are doing it for the dollar.
Posted by: Brenda Serenata at September 21, 2006 02:18 PM