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November 15, 2011 at 09:39 AM
Principal Financial Group Inc. is outfitting its dental insurance program with a classic health care cost containment feature: Access to second opinions.
Major medical plans have been urging consumers to get a second opinion before having major procedures for decades.
Principal, Des Moines, Iowa (NYSE:PFG), will now be giving dental plan enrollees the flexibility to seek additional opinions from two or more dentists before electing a dental procedure.
A plan member can use vouchers to pay for two more second opinions.
Principal also offers Web-based cost calculators
THE NEW THING
SeeChange Health, San Francisco, a division of Triveris L.L.C., Eatontown, N.J., is offering employers throughout the United States access to one of the new cost containment ideas: Value-based insurance design (VBID).
Managers of VBID programs try to use low or no co-payments and other personalized incentives to encourage patients to get the kinds of care that seem likely to lead to the most improvement in health and biggest reductions in overall care costs.
SeeChange already serves plans with about 1 million enrollees, and it is now making an “administrative services only” (ASO) personalized VBID health program available to self-insured employers in all 50 states.
An employer could tailor the program to fit its culture and choose, for example, whether to emphasize condition management programs or wellness programs, SeeChange says.
