The nation's largest health insurer is making its free mobile app available to everyone, in a bid to move the needle on price transparency.
Anyone, not members, can now use UnitedHealthcare's free and recently-updated mobile application, Health4Me.
The mobile app, available in iTunes and Android and downloaded by more than 900,000 members, offers individuals the ability to locate nearby hospitals, emergency rooms and urgent care facilities and review average local prices for 520 services across 290 episodes of care, with a cost estimator based on tests and treatments.
"Giving consumers access to important medical cost information is improving transparency and making it easier for people to navigate the healthcare system," said Yasmine Winkler, UnitedHealthcare's chief product, marketing and innovation officer, in a media release.
"With reliable and actionable information about the prices of services, consumers now have an important resource at their fingertips that can help them make decisions to improve their health and save money," Winkler said.
United's Health4Me app evolved out of a digital comparison tool released eight years ago, and the cost estimator debuted in 2012, with an update recently added.
The added functionality offers some 21 million UnitedHealthcare plan members personalized cost estimates based on actual contracted rates with providers and real-time member account balances for those with health savings, reimbursement or spending accounts.
Member engagement strategy
Winkler, who came to United in 2009 from Health Care Services Corporation, added that the app's expansion to all consumer's is meant to tackle the persisting problem of price opacity and variation, citing two big examples in two big markets: total costs for an uncomplicated childbirth at New York City hospitals ranging between $9,700 and $29,000, and costs for lumbar fusion ranging between $59,000 and $77,400 in San Francisco.
Whether United's app being available to everyone will make a dent in those problems remains to be seen. While Health4Me has been downloaded by 900,000 members, it has gotten mixed reviews -- an average of 2.5 out of five stars in iTunes and 3.4 out of five in the Android GooglePlay store -- with some users reporting issues with freezing and crashing, but others describing it as "very handy" and "super convenient."
Either way, the Health4Me app is just a part of United's strategy on the related fronts of member engagement and transparency.
Earlier this year, in a bid to boost its wellness product portfolio, United's Optum subsidiary took a majority stake in Audax Health Solutions, a digital health startup with a health risk assessment and engagement application.
United is also joining Aetna and Humana in a partnership with the Health Care Cost Institute to offer what they call "the most comprehensive information about the price and quality of healthcare services," based on data from commercial, Medicare Advantage, managed Medicaid and eventually fee-for-service Medicare and Medicaid and potentially other insurers.