Will new HHS health reform website rank health care providers?
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) launched its new consumer focused health care website yesterday at www.healthcare.gov. It’s supposed to become a “powerful tool” that consumers will use to find health insurance at competitive prices, as well as clinical information on diseases and prevention.
Of interest to private practitioners is this line in the news release that was published yesterday with the launch of the site: “The website will connect consumers to quality rankings for local health care providers as well as preventive services.”
Does this mean the new Healthcare.gov site will have a data base of practitioners ranked by consumers that can be accessed by prospective patients? I called HHS but a spokesman said he was swamped and didn’t have the details yet.
Second day of the launch and all that, and the site already contains 500 pages of content. That’s a lot of material to wade through—and right on the brink of a holiday weekend. (And such nice weather in Washington, too.)
So stay tuned.
One thing the site will have – eventually – is comparison prices for health care plans. This, we’ve been told, has irritated health insurance officials since some of their plans are closed but they were required to provide information to the feds anyway.
Naturally, everyone is on Twitter these days and HealthCare.gov is no exception. In the wee hours after the open, www.twitter.com/@healthcare.gov had just 11 followers, 0 followers and no tweets.
By this morning, there were 840 following, the site was following 12, and they’d posted two tweets.
Related: Speaking of social media, if you’re a TRICARE provider you can now receive updates about the military health benefits programs from Facebook and Twitter.
Find them at: www.facebook.com/tricare and www.twitter.com/tricare.