Program Helps Consumers Understand HealthCare Plans and Options
URAC, the nation's leading health care accreditation and education organization, today announced its new Consumer Education Initiative, which teaches consumers about health insurance and identifies ways they can make more informed decisions about their health care.
"Many consumers need help navigating through the health care maze. Often they do not understand what their health care plan covers and how to ask the right questions to get the best plan for their individual needs," said Alan P. Spielman, president and CEO of URAC. "Knowing when to select an HMO versus a PPO versus a CDHP plan can be difficult. Our initiative empowers consumers to take responsibility and play an active role in their health by breaking down the complex selection process into more understandable components."
As part of the Consumer Education Initiative, URAC created a Health Care Communications Toolkit, which includes materials developed by The American Institutes for Research with funding from the California HealthCare Foundation. URAC updated and republished the materials, with permission from the organizations, to create several multi-media tools consumers can use to make better health care decisions, assume more "ownership" over their health care, and increase their ability to take on new behaviors to improve their health and the quality of care they receive.
For the toolkit, URAC assembled eight tip sheets covering three important topic areas: 1) Understanding the basics of health care quality and the importance of evidence-based information; 2) Tips for getting good quality care before, during, and after a health care appointment care; and 3) How to use the Internet to find health information consumers can trust. This last area is particularly important to URAC, as the organization offers a Health Web Site Accreditation that assures consumers that a company's Web site is trustworthy and meets URAC's demanding quality standards.