Consumers Push for Information

Subimo's content will reside in CareKey's Personal Health Management System, and its member-facing online decision-support tools will be integrated with CareKey's system. The first installation will take place in the third quarter with mutual clients of the two companies.

"By combining these two architectures, we'll be able to push - versus pull - information to consumers and into the nurse workflow. We are pushing the right information to the right people at the right time," said John Fiacco, executive vice president of Subimo. This double-pronged approach allows for the education of members about their care and the cost-effective management of in-house clinical resources.

With the administrative aspects of consumer-directed health plans and financial incentives in place, the next step is to give consumers personalized advice and clinical content," said Kevin Agatstein, vice president of operations for Boston-based CareKey.

"Consumer-directed healthcare is coming of age now with what we call the personalization touch," he said.

Everybody benefits, according to Fiacco, when consumers are engaged and armed with healthcare knowledge. They will make better choices and be more satisfied with their health plan, while associated decreasing costs will benefit health plans.

"We're seeing a lot of partnerships around CDHPs, and there's certainly a market out there for turnkey solutions," said Katy Henrickson, senior analyst in healthcare and life science at Forrester Research.

While the big national plans, which have a larger share of CDHP members, are early adopters in providing standard healthcare administration products, there is little integration in the business processes and the burden is on consumers to connect the dots. This is where out-of-the-box consumer solutions would be beneficial for consumers, employers and health plans.

A Forrester Research survey revealed that most consumers do not go to the health plan Web site for general health content, although health plans are making great strides in providing consumers with tools they need to make better healthcare decisions.

At the same time, however, 44 percent of employers expect their health plans to source quality data, according to the Forrester Research survey.