Co-Founder and COO Robert Hendrick spent a few minutes with the local TV crew to share tips on how to save money on your prescriptions. Easy steps that can add up to huge savings. You’ll be surprised!

Thanks for all of the support, and for trusting us to help you make smarter healthcare decisions and save money in the process.

Now, healthcare answers come in 140 characters or less. Which is a far cry from the nearly 2,000-page health reform bill the U.S. Congress has been proposing.

Starting today, consumers can simply tweet healthcare questions such as “what is diabetes” to @askch and it will return a short description and a link to more information. Or tweet “cost of celebrex near 37209” and you get “average price of $163 in 37209″ in return.

The engine behind this new Twitter application is Nashville-based consumerism company change:healthcare, which uses the web to provide information to the public about healthcare, its costs and ways to save money. Company developers realized that the social media phenomenon could extend consumer information into the exam room, so they developed the first phase of what will be a much larger application that delivers accurate healthcare costs and information to consumers’ fingertips within 60 seconds, helping them be more informed and potentially save hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars.

Hey, when cutting the cost of healthcare, who needs Washington, anyway?

“It’s not everything you need to know, but it gets you to a well-informed starting point when you want to make a smart healthcare purchase,” says Christopher Parks, co-founder and CEO of change:healthcare. “If you’re looking for information about the cost of a prescription your physician is prescribing, then we’ve got an answer. If you want to know more about the flu virus, we get you started on finding out more.”

“It’s the first time ever that consumers can use an existing social media application to quickly discover – wherever they are — how they can save money on their healthcare. We already have the next iteration in beta that significantly broadens the information for consumers,” Parks said.

To work effectively, users first need to “follow” @askch from their Twitter account. Then, it’s simply a matter of asking questions via direct message (to keep responses confidential).

For the beta launch, change:healthcare identified the five most consistently asked questions at their website. As users provide more feedback about the service and their information needs via the @askch page, the types of information and questions will be expanded.

The search works using a pre-defined format: What is (health issue); What is (drug name); Cost of (drug name) near (zipcode); Generic for (drug name); and Generic discounts for (drug name) near (zipcode). Messages should be asked as listed and without punctuation.

For those that need it, the company has developed a simple tutorial .

Who is change:healthcare?

A technology firm focused on helping people save money and make informed healthcare consumer decisions, change:healthcare provides its users access to information about medical provider quality, cost, access and performance. There’s even an alert function that proactively notifies users when there’s a cost savings opportunity.

The company’s core business is providing employers and employees relevant and easy-to-use information about where in their area they can get the most cost-effective treatment, services and prescriptions.

“There’s a lot of misinformation about healthcare and costs running around out there.” Parks continued. “So when it comes to your health, it’s nice to know that there’s a professional source you can turn to 24-7 for a quick answer. Twitter just helps us compress the delivery time to consumers for that information. And all folks need to do is follow us on Twitter @askch.”

View the published press release and Download it in PDF format here.

HMS (Healthcare Managements Systems Inc.) announced August 7th (I know, I am a little behind) that they have an online bill payment tool available for hospitals.  This would allow them to send bills and statements electronically, as well as recieve online payments from patients.

Excepts from their announcement: “Our online bill pay product creates a particular advantage for the facility by allowing patient payments entered through a hospital’s web portal to be automatically updated in their HMS Patient Accounting solution.”

“The new HMS online offerings are a vast improvement over our previous solution,” said Michael Pracheil, Thayer’s chief financial officer. “Now our patients can click a link on our hospital website and see past bills, set up recurring payments or make a one-time ACH transfer or credit card payment. Our hospital staff has access to the same information so they can work with patients to set up electronic payments over the phone.”

Though there will be slow uptake and some patient resistance to use new online technologies relating to their medical care…  This a step in the right direction!  Reducing paper flow and processing will save the system both time and money, hopefully cutting some administrative overhead. If given the option to participate in electronic billing with your medical provider… at least take a moment to ask questions and consider the option!

Shannon Buggs at the Houston Chronicle has written a great piece “Close Look at Hospital Bills Saves Money” on taking a closer look at your hospital bills for errors.  Though there have been numerous pieces on this topic, this one in particular (find it here) has  some great tips included at the end. I have her “common errors to look for on your bills” below:

Wrong names: If you or your insurance company’s name is misspelled, there is a chance the hospital did not correctly calculate the charges based on your actual coverage plan.

Clerical errors: The two pills you took while in the hospital are input accidentally as 222 pills. Those typing mistakes are simple to correct and costly to let stand.

Extra dates: Your insurance company may not pay room-and-board fees for discharge days, but your bill may include a charge for that date. Also make sure you are not charged for a hospital stay for the same day you visited the emergency room if your treatment resulted in a post-midnight hospital admittance.

Out-of-network charges: Follow up with your insurance company to make sure the hospital contacted your insurer to get all necessary approvals before doing procedures.

Brand-name substitutes: Compare the doctor’s orders to the hospital bill. If the physician ordered a generic medicine commonly stocked in hospital pharmacies, but the hospital substituted a more expensive brand-name drug, you should not have to pay the higher cost.

Did you know we recently improved our email alerts?  Now, you can choose to receive weekly or monthly Ways to Save alerts and/or Activity updates.  The Ways to Save alerts are sent to you to alert you of ways to save money on your healthcare expenses. When new savings opportunities are identified, we email them to you.  The Activity updates include updates about your friends, doctors, prescriptions and health issues. These updates can be profile comments, ways to save opportunities and more.  If you do not want to receive any emails, that’s an option too.  You can also sign up to receive our periodic newsletter about change:healthcare, site updates and new features.

To personalize your email settings, start by selected the Profile settings link just below your user name on the upper-left side of the screen.  Then, you will be brought to your main profile settings.  From here, click the Email Settings tab.

Here you can edit what emails you receive and how often you receive them.  Simply choose your desired settings, then click Save Settings and you’re done!

We hope that this new feature improves your experience as a change:healthcare user!