Both of Shannon’s daughters are dancers. When one of them needed an MRI last year, Shannon turned to Healthcare Bluebook (Bluebook) and saved $1,500 on the procedure. An employee of Trustmark in Lancaster, PA, Shannon understood the powerful benefits of Bluebook’s price and quality transparency solution after using the tool provided through a previous health insurance plan.
With two athletic daughters who occasionally experienced performance-related injuries, she had become cost-conscious about medical care and regularly searched for ways to offset the high costs of imaging and related treatment. “We have to be really smart about how we spend our dollars because our kids are young and active and may have claims,” Shannon explained. When Trustmark announced that the company would provide Bluebook to employees in 2019, she was thrilled.
Through her successful experience with Bluebook, Shannon learned that facility fees for common imaging procedures can vary by hundreds, even thousands of dollars. When the doctor referred them to a local hospital for her daughter’s MRI, Shannon discovered that the facility charged $2,500 for the procedure. She used Bluebook to research price ranges for MRIs in her area and located a provider that charged less than $1,000.
Shopping for care made simple. Bluebook’s easy-to-use color-coded system made it simple for Shannon to identify green providers who charge at or below a fair price, yellow providers who are slightly above, and red providers who charge the highest fees for services.
Not only was she able to pocket the $1,500 she saved at the independent imaging center, the facility provided Shannon with a copy of her daughter’s MRI results to take to her doctor. “It was really a great experience, so I was really excited that Trustmark was going to begin offering Healthcare Bluebook to employees.”
Bluebook has an app for that. While attending a recent Healthcare Bluebook webinar, Shannon learned about our app and downloaded it to search for mammography providers close by. “It was very easy to use, easy to download and easy to log in,” she explained. “I was able to find ‘green’ providers close to home and work, which gave me some good options.”
Not only does Bluebook help benefits plan participants save on medical costs, the solution complements and integrates seamlessly with other benefits provider platforms. In addition, employers that choose to implement a rewards program, such as our Go Green to Get Green program, incentivize employees to select green physicians who refer patients to green facilities for common procedures like colonoscopies, knee arthroscopies, CT scans, MRIs and sleep studies.
The bottom line. Healthcare Bluebook’s price and quality transparency solution helps employers reduce their overall medical spend by enabling enrolled employees to navigate to high-value healthcare. When healthcare benefits costs come down, premiums will follow, and everyone saves.
For more information or to schedule a demo of our transparency tool, contact us today.
