Changehealthcare.com - Make Healthcare more Transparent

Do you know how much your neighbor pays for health care? How much your cousin in Tennessee pays for the same prescription tablets that you take? Healthcare costs continue to rise every year, but there is no transparency to help users make informed decisions. Change:Healthcare hopes to shed some light on healthcare costs. The site allows users to compare and evaluate specific doctors, see the different costs associated with medical procedures, search and evaluate health plans, and compare costs of prescription drugs. The “bill management” function allows members to make sense of their medical bills.

“The company is charged with developing and providing people with the tools and information they need to make the best decisions possible as a healthcare consumer.”

The company has taken on the massive task of making the labyrinth healthcare industry more transparent and manageable. Change:Healthcare has the framework and ideas in place- the site has good points of comparison, an easy search application- and once all the data is in place, will be a boon to consumers.

Where is all the data? A search on any doctor will reveal a graph of the price of average procedures (which are seemingly random- two doctors in totally separate fields had the same procedures compared), and a box that says more information is needed. Moreover, wouldn’t it be useful to compare prices based on geography? To see if a procedure costs less five hours south?