FAIR Health Launches Expanded Spanish-Language Consumer Website

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Site Enables Hispanics/Latinos to Better Understand and Plan Healthcare Costs

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Sep 17, 2018, 06:52 ET

NEW YORK, Sept. 17, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Fairhealthconsumidor.org, a free, newly expanded Spanish-language healthcare cost transparency website, is being launched by FAIR Health, a national, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information. With generous support from The New York Community Trust (The Trust), the mobile-optimized FAIR Health Consumidor has been redesigned and augmented to include all the features of FAIR Health's free, award-winning, recently revised English-language consumer website, fairhealthconsumer.org.

Because open enrollment season, the period when consumers can enroll in or make changes to a health plan, begins this fall, clear information about health insurance and healthcare costs is especially valuable now. FAIR Health Consumidor's cost lookup tool, which is powered by FAIR Health's database of billions of billed medical and dental claims, allows Spanish-speaking consumers to estimate their medical or dental costs for particular procedures in their geographic areas. The tool takes into account whether they are insured or uninsured—and if insured, whether they are seeking in-network care, i.e., within their plans' networks, or are seeking care out of network. New features include:

Typical in-network rates for thousands of medical procedures in the consumer's locale, so consumers can estimate how much they will have to pay their in-network providers for care before they meet their deductibles;
Total and itemized costs of 25 common "bundles" or episodes of care that involve multiple procedures related to a single medical condition, such as diabetes, or a complex procedure, such as a hip replacement;
A toolkit explaining how to use healthcare quality measures to make informed decisions about care;
Expanded educational resources with more articles on health insurance and healthcare costs;
Videos showing the usefulness of the site for researching costs on different health conditions; and
A fresh design and easy-to-use interface.

In addition, residents of New York State will find, for 100 commonly performed procedures, a listing of thousands of New York State-based healthcare providers with information about their practices and prices. For scores of hospitals in selected regions in the state, the site lists facility pricing for a set of outpatient procedures and detailed quality metrics. Within New York City, FAIR Health will conduct a multifaceted, culturally relevant marketing campaign designed to reach the city's Hispanic/Latino population.

FAIR Health President Robin Gelburd commented: "The Hispanic/Latino community is disproportionately uninsured and faces linguistic and cultural barriers to understanding health insurance. We are excited to offer new Spanish-language consumer tools to help them make informed decisions about managing their healthcare and preparing for its costs."

Irfan Hasan, program director of The Trust's Healthy Lives, stated: "Improving healthcare is not simply about seeing the doctor—it is also about managing the associated costs and understanding how health insurance works. With this new website, Hispanic/Latino communities will have access to a new level of information so they can safeguard their health and their wallets."

About FAIR Health

FAIR Health is a national, independent, nonprofit organization dedicated to bringing transparency to healthcare costs and health insurance information through data products, consumer resources and health systems research support. FAIR Health possesses the nation's largest collection of private healthcare claims data, which includes over 26 billion claim records contributed by payors and administrators who insure or process claims for private insurance plans covering more than 150 million individuals. FAIR Health licenses its privately billed data and data products—including benchmark modules, data visualizations, custom analytics, episodes of care analytics and market indices—to commercial insurers and self-insurers, employers, providers, hospitals and healthcare systems, government agencies, researchers and others. FAIR Health also holds separate data representing the experience of all individuals enrolled in traditional Medicare from 2013 to the present (as well as Medicare Advantage enrollees represented in its private claims data). Certified by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) as a Qualified Entity, FAIR Health receives all of Medicare Parts A, B and D claims data for use in nationwide transparency efforts. FAIR Health can produce insightful analytic reports and data products based on combined Medicare and commercial claims data for government, providers, payors and other authorized users. FAIR Health has earned HITRUST CSF and Service Organization Controls (SOC 2) certifications by meeting the rigorous data security requirements of these standards. As a testament to the reliability and objectivity of FAIR Health data, the data have been incorporated in statutes and regulations around the country and designated as the official, neutral data source for a variety of state health programs, including workers' compensation and personal injury protection (PIP) programs. FAIR Health data serve as an official reference point in support of certain state balance billing laws that protect consumers against bills for surprise out-of-network and emergency services. FAIR Health also uses its database to power a free consumer website available in English and Spanish and an English/Spanish mobile app, which enable consumers to estimate and plan their healthcare expenditures and offer a rich educational platform on health insurance. The website has been honored by the White House Summit on Smart Disclosure, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), URAC, the eHealthcare Leadership Awards, appPicker, Employee Benefit News and Kiplinger's Personal Finance. FAIR Health also is named a top resource for patients in Elisabeth Rosenthal's book, An American Sickness: How Healthcare Became Big Business and How You Can Take It Back. For more information on FAIR Health, visit fairhealth.org.

About The New York Community Trust

Through the generosity of New Yorkers who have set up charitable funds with us, we are able to make grants for a huge range of charitable activity so important to the well-being of our city. We are New York City's community foundation, and one of the largest funders of City nonprofits. Since 1924, The Trust has helped make donors' charitable dreams come true by funding the nonprofits that make our city a vital and secure place. See nycommunitytrust.org.

Contact:
Dean Sicoli
Executive Director of Communications and Public Relations
FAIR Health
646-664-1645
[email protected]

SOURCE FAIR Health