NEW YORK, Feb. 10: Men and women of all age groups have been visiting YouCanPlanForThis.org, a free website created by independent nonprofit FAIR Health that enables New York State residents to plan their healthcare costs. This preliminary evidence of the site's broad appeal comes from FAIR Health analytics.
Significantly, both women and men visited the site. Consistent with focus groups FAIR Health has conducted showing that 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. "MRI" and "root canal" were, respectively, the top medical and dental terms searched.
"We are excited that YouCanPlanForThis.org is appealing to all groups of New Yorkers," said FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd. "This shows the public's desire for independent, reliable healthcare cost data and understandable health insurance information to help them plan for medical and dental expenses. We hope that our ground-breaking New York website, which was funded in part with the generous support of the New York State Health Foundation, will serve as a prototype for other states looking to offer price transparency tools for their constituents."
With the site's cost lookup tools, which are powered by FAIR Health's billions of private healthcare claims records, consumers can 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. They also can research total and itemized costs of 25 common "episodes of care" or medical bundles. In addition, they can 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.
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.
Vital statistics about visitors to the site include:
•Age: The distribution of age groups visiting the site was:
◦18-24—12.40 percent
◦25-34—13.58 percent
◦35-44—9.65 percent
◦45-54—12.21 percent
◦55-64—18.90 percent
◦65 and older—33.25 percent
•Gender: At 63.09 percent of visitors, women predominated; the other 36.91 percent were men.
•Top terms searched (from most to least common):
◦Medical: MRI, colonoscopy, dermatological, physical therapy, emergency
◦Dental: root canal, implant, orthodontic, extraction, crown
•Technology: Of visitors to the site, the vast majority—74.52 percent—used mobile devices. Tablets accounted for 18.71 percent of traffic, desktops 6.77 percent.
•Top channels of acquisition: Largely due to a robust statewide educational campaign, 65 percent of visitors came to the site through a direct web search for the site, while 25 percent visited the site through a link on social media. Referrals triggered by media mentions about the site accounted for most of the remaining traffic.
