The importance of health care transparency
Key takeaways
Health care transparency is the knowledge of how much health care is going to cost before receiving care. Supporting health care transparency for employees positively impacts their personal lives—and your workplace.
You invest significantly in the benefits you offer your employees, so naturally you want your employees to appreciate their coverage. One way to help ensure your employees value their benefits is to support their need for health care transparency. What is health care transparency, why is it important and how can you help? Read on for everything you need to know!
What is health care transparency?
Have you ever been surprised by the amount owed on a bill you received after a medical appointment, procedure or test? If yes, health care transparency was missing before you received care.
Health care transparency is the knowledge of how much health care is going to cost before receiving care. When shopping at the store, you don’t purchase items without first knowing the price. Unfortunately, health care often doesn’t work the same way. The majority of patients don’t know how much they’re going pay for their health care until after they’ve received services and it’s too late.
Health care transparency often isn’t possible in emergency situations, but employees should definitely know how much they’re going to spend before planned procedures, tests and appointments.
Why is health care transparency important?
Surely by now you’re seeing why health care transparency is so important! Nearly 1 in 10 adults—or 23 million people—owe medical debt. This includes 11 million who owe more than $2,000 and 3 million people who owe more than $10,000, according to Kaiser Family Foundation.1
Perhaps the number of people in medical debt—and the amount they owed—would be lower if health care transparency was a priority in our health care system!
Not only does lack of health care transparency impact your employees’ personal lives, but it affects your workplace as well. That’s because financially stressed employees spend over three average workweeks per year distracted from work while worrying about their personal finances, costing U.S. companies $150 billion in lost productivity every year.2
How can you support health care transparency for employees?
The first thing you can do to support health care transparency for employees is to simply raise awareness. For many employees, it doesn’t even occur to them to ask how much something will cost before receiving care. The hospital price transparency act requires all U.S. hospitals to provide clear, accessible pricing information online about the items and services they provide. Employees can also call customer service for help in understanding costs.
Navigating hospital websites and billing departments can be overwhelming and time-consuming for employees, though, so the second thing you can do to support health care transparency is to provide employees access to a benefits advocacy service.
A benefits advocacy service is a team of experts who employees can call on for assistance with their benefits and health care. Advocates can help support health care transparency for employees by:
- Comparing costs for tests and procedures
- Helping employees shop around for care
- Explaining how benefits cover physician visits, tests, procedures and medications
- Finding in-network providers
- Reviewing bills for accuracy
- Helping employees understand the diagnosis and treatment plan
- Coordinating prior authorizations and pre-certifications
- Helping employees save money on prescriptions
- Making appointments, transferring medical records, arranging home care services and more
Optavise has your advocacy needs covered
Are you interested in receiving more information about how Optavise benefits advocacy can help support health care transparency for your employees? Contact us here to get started!
1Kaiser Family Foundation, 1 in 10 Adults Owe Medical Debt, With Millions owing more than $10,000, https://www.kff.org/health-costs/press-release/1-in-10-adults-owe-medical-debt-with-millions-owing-more-than-10000, March 2022.
2Experian, The Costly Impact of Financial Stress—and What you Can Do About It, https://www.experian.com/blogs/partner-solutions/2023/02/the-costly-impact-of-financial-stress-employees-and-what-you-can-do-about-it/, February 2023.