Health plans need to do more to inform their members on a number of healthcare topics and do a better job alerting patients and doctors on needed cancer screenings, a new national survey concludes.
The eValue8 report of health plan performance released today by the nonprofit National Business Coalition on Health says health plans could do a better job at:
• Sharing important information with their customers,
• Enabling improvements in patient safety,
• Care coordination,
• Consumer selection of the best providers
• Member health maintenance.
"This year's eValue8 results prove health plans are collecting information that would be helpful to doctors and patients, however many are not leveraging it to improve health and healthcare," said Andrew Webber, president and CEO of NBCH. "NBCH and its coalition members call on health plans to better utilize the trove of claims data at their fingertips to provide information for consumers."
Also the report concludes that plans are lacking when it comes to providing their members with information about physicians.
"Consumers are rarely informed about which physicians have adopted standard health information technology," states the report.
Twenty-eight percent of plans provide information on a physician's accessibility of e-mail communications, 15 percent include information on availability of Web consultations, and 10 percent include information on prescribing.
Health plans should take a more active role in reminding patients of needed cancer screenings, according to the report. "Health plans have the claims data and know which members need screenings due to how old the member is or if they have not gotten a screening. Yet not enough health plans are using the information to ensure members are getting important screenings," the report states.