• Your Doctor May Be Clueless About Cost (U.S. News)
• How To Cut Health Care Costs (Forbes.com)
• Health care costs rising, but expenses can be controlled (USA Today)
• This Open-Enrollment Season, Beware of Out-of-Pocket Costs (Wall Street Journal)
• Logging On for a Second (or Third) Opinion (The New York Times)
• Six Ways to Save Money on Prescription Drugs and Doctors (CNN.com)

I am pleased to announce the new release of OutofPocket.com, version 2.0.  Our new search engine enables consumers to look-up prices for health care services, and allows providers to list their prices/services in the directory - free of charge.  In addition, the search engine features expanded search technology and searches for health care price data across other public price transparency tools.

I welcome all your feedback and comments on this new release and I would appreciate if you could help us spread the word.  As you know, the more people that contribute and use this tool, the more powerful it will become for everyone.

Thank you for all that you do to help promote health care price transparency. 

NEW FEATURES IN OUTOFPOCKET.COM VERSION 2.0

(1) Enhanced search engine provides more relevant search results

(2) Easy for consumers to post/share their own visits and prices they paid for services

(3) Comprehensive search results - searches other websites that publish pricing and websites that offer price transparency tools

PRICE DATA COLLECTED FROM MULTIPLE SOURCES

·         Providers can submit price lists for their services

·         Consumers are invited to post/share prices they paid for actual visits, along with their personal recommendations on the provider

·         Claims Data from Businesses, Health Plans or TPAs

·         Government CMS Medicare payment data

·         Websites that publish prices for health care services including hospitals, diagnostic testing facilities, clinics and physician practices

·         Price Transparency Tools on public websites including health plan tools and state price transparency tools

BENEFITS for BUSINESSES

·         Load your claims data into OutofPocket.com to enable your employees to search for their true out-of-pocket costs for specific service

·         Employees can use OutofPocket.com to search for prices for specific services in your network plan

·         Encourage employees to collaborate and post prices they paid for health care services, to share these good deals with other employees

·         Eliminate providers that overcharge - Use OutofPocket.com to direct your employees to affordable, low-cost providers

·         Avoid providers with poor performance by encouraging employees to share recommendations on provider visits

BENEFITS for CONSUMERS

·         Look-up prices, comparison shop and find the best value for routine health care services in your neighborhood

·         Tool makes it easy for you to post/share prices you paid for actual services with other consumers

·         Share your recommendations on a specific provider with other consumers

BENEFITS for PROVIDERS

·         Add your true prices/services to the directory – free of charge

·         Consumers can easily find your services and link to your website

·         Include additional information about your practice, services

·         Search results links directly to your website

·         Provides additional exposure for your services

Instead of sitting  back and waiting for the government, providers and insurers to publish meaningful price data to help consumers make informed decisions about value, we developed a solution that can help consumers today.  In July, we launched an early release of www.OutofPocket.com, a platform for collecting and sharing price information for routine health care services.  This online resource, OutofPocket.com, enables consumers to share price information that can help others find the best value.  Our objective was to collect early feedback, build awareness for the new website, and enable people to start sharing price information to help others find the best value.  While the website is still evolving, we strongly believe that launching OutofPocket is better than doing nothing.   OutofPocket is available today for consumers to start collecting and sharing true prices for health care services.

To everyone that sent us comments - thank you for taking the time to review our website and send us your feedback.  We consider your feedback a gift. 

Over the next couple of months we will be working on the next release of the website.  Our #1 goal is when you search on OutofPocket.com, you will always have relevant content returned in the search results.

Some of the features we are working on include

1. enhance the wizard to make it easier for you to post you visits/prices/recommendations

2. allow users to rate search results and add their recommendations to a provider already in the directory

3. invite providers that disclose pricing to include their services/prices in the directory

4. include additional Government CMS Medicare payment data

5. improve the dislay of search results to identify consumer-generated-content, provider price list, and Medicare data.

We invite you to continue adding your visits and price information to the directory.  If enough people participate to share prices, consumers will have created a very powerful pricing directory.  Thank you for all that you do to help make this grassroots initiative successful.