Men and women of all age groups have been visiting YouCanPlanForThis.org [1], a free website launched in September 2017 by independent nonprofit FAIR Health that enables New York State residents to plan their healthcare costs.
The site offers cost lookup tools, powered by FAIR Health’s billions of private healthcare claims records, that allow consumers to estimate in-network and out of-network costs for thousands of medical procedures in their geographic areas, and out-of-network costs for dental procedures, with estimated in-network costs for dental procedures due to be launched later this year.
Consumers can also research total and itemized costs of 25 common ‘episodes of care’ or medical bundles, as well as access individual provider listings for 100 frequently performed procedures in the state, including information about providers’ practices and prices. A rich educational curriculum offers articles on insurance basics, a glossary, videos, resource links and information on healthcare quality measures.
Since the website’s launch on September 12, 2017 through January 23, 2018, adults from 18 to 65 and older have used the site. Baby boomers (defined by the U.S. Census Bureau as ages 54-72) were a large constituency, with about half of the site’s visitors aged 55 and older. Millennials (defined by the Census Bureau as ages 18-36) counted for over a quarter of all site visitors.
Significantly, both women and men visited the site. Women are often healthcare decision makers and caregivers, the majority of visitors were women, but men also were well represented. Almost 75 percent of visitors used mobile devices to access the site, and 25 percent of visitors arrived via social media—suggesting the growing power of both mobile devices and social media in directing people to the healthcare resources they need.
These numbers come from FAIR Health analytics.
On February 1, 2018, FAIR Health launched the second phase of YouCanPlanForThis.org, featuring hospital-specific pricing for 20 common outpatient procedures with specified quality metrics for hospitals in four New York regions: Albany, Buffalo, Syracuse and Westchester.
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