HighRoads, the company providing employers – for the first time – complete control over their health care costs and compliance, today announced findings from the industry’s first medical travel request for information (RFI) for Fortune 500 employers to compare health care procedural ethics, quality and costs around the world. Initial results show that flat pricing, surgeon compensation and use of electronic medical records vary dramatically from hospital to hospital.
HighRoads’ first Medical Travel survey represents 66 vanguard facilities including over 50 U.S. hospitals and ambulatory surgery facilities and 11 outside the U.S. These health care organizations, including BridgeHealth, Healthplace America, HIMA Health, Intermountain Healthcare and Scott & White, responded to HighRoads first medical travel request for information based on their desire to introduce procedural cost and quality transparency and reduce health care costs.
Leveraging HighRoads industry-standard benefits management technology, the RFI was designed to provide Fortune 500 employers comparable ethical, quality and flat fee data to make the best choice for superior medical procedures for employees at the lowest possible cost. The HighRoads Medical Travel RFI included questions such as:
- When patients come to your hospital/clinic for a surgical procedure, are such patients screened by impartial physicians, other than the physician who will perform the surgery?
- Which describes the surgeons who perform surgery through your hospital/clinic:
- Salaried
- Salaried with paid incentives based on volume or revenue generated
- Paid on a fee for service basis
- If your hospital/clinic provides a flat price for eight major procedures including aortic valve replacement, total hip replacement, cholecystectomy, please provide your prices in US dollars, the average number of cases per month, mortality rates and infection rates.
Some of the initial survey findings include: