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Healthcare Price Transparency Solutions 2016
An Early Look
Author
Joe VanDeGraaff
Author
Lois Krotz
Healthcare costs are soaring. Insurance premiums keep rising. And for most consumers, healthcare costs are anything but transparent—when the “mystery” bill finally arrives, many are shocked at what they have to pay. This first-time KLAS report takes a very preliminary look at vendor solutions used in the price transparency market and highlights client experiences among payers, employers, and providers.
INTRODUCTION AND MARKET CONTEXT
1. TRANSPARENCY LACKING IN PRICE TRANSPARENCY MARKET
As KLAS does in other markets, we invited all vendors in this report to share a list of customers so that KLAS could validate customer success (and thus help create transparency). Vendor willingness to share was much less than what KLAS sees in other markets—only half of the vendors were willing to share even 10 of their best or more advanced customer installs.
* Vendor Disclosure: KLAS invited vendors to share a limited list of 10 leading client organizations that are using the vendor solution. Disclosure level shows vendor transparency and the depth of the client information provided.
** Categories shown for number of customers are 5, 6-15, 16-30, 31-50, 51-100, 101+. Vendor-reported number of customers is specific to customers using the vendor's price transparency solution, was provided by the vendor, and has NOT been verified by KLAS.
2. MOST RECOGNIZED VENDOR CASTLIGHT HEALTH STANDS OUT-BUT NOT WITH HEALTH PLANS
A preliminary look at vendor performance shows that employer clients give high praise to Castlight Health for a robust solution and proactive support, but use by health plan clients is rare, as they feel the vendor's model is misaligned. In contrast, Change Healthcare and Vitals are often used by employers and payers, though these vendors' early client ratings aren't as high as those of Castlight Health. Clients using Change Healthcare call out the unique engagement approach and product alerts; Vitals customers see some differentiation in the user experience.
3. VITALS CLIENTS REPORT MOST IMPACT ON COST; ADOPTION STRUGGLES LIMIT HEALTHSPARQ AND TRUVEN HEALTH
An early, first-time look at the client perspective on user adoption and cost impact shows Vitals driving a fairly consistent impact on healthcare costs, largely fueled by the vendor’s user-incentive programs. Employer clients using Castlight Health excel with user adoption. Payer clients using Truven Health and HealthSparq see promise in the products’ capabilities but struggle with the difficult feat of achieving solution adoption among health plan members. This problem limits the overall impact on healthcare costs.
4. IN PATIENT BILL ESTIMATION, EXPERIAN HEALTH, TRIZETTO, AND RECONDO TECHNOLOGY CREATE EXCITEMENT
Early data from hospitals and clinics who are advanced in their use of patient bill estimation highlights Experian Health as having a strong product with proactive service to match; the handful of early adopters for Recondo Technology and TriZetto are impressed with their solutions and express excitement. Quickly growing in number, hospitals using Epic highlight integration but are less satisfied with the solution. Best-of-breed solutions from MedAssets, TransUnion Healthcare, and RelayHealth are seen as other notable options.
Writer
Elizabeth Pew
Designer
Natalie Jamison
Project Manager
Robert Ellis
This material is copyrighted. Any organization gaining unauthorized access to this report will be liable to compensate KLAS for the full retail price. Please see the KLAS DATA USE POLICY for information regarding use of this report. © 2024 KLAS Research, LLC. All Rights Reserved. NOTE: Performance scores may change significantly when including newly interviewed provider organizations, especially when added to a smaller sample size like in emerging markets with a small number of live clients. The findings presented are not meant to be conclusive data for an entire client base.