Amazon Pays Costs for Its Employees to Seek Specialized, Early Cancer Care

Employers are becoming increasingly active in providing special health services to their employees. Such an employee/employer cohort is being called a aSmart Health Community, the activities of which are beneficial to both parties (see:Smart health communities and the future of health). Now comes news that Amazon is assisting its employees in getting high quality cancer care from a specified cancer hospital (see:Amazon Joins Trend of Sending Workers Away for Health Care). Below is an excerpt from the article:Employers are increasingly going the distance to control health spending, paying to send workers across the country to get medical care and bypassing local health-care providers. One of the latest is Amazon...which will pay travel costs for workers diagnosed with cancer who choose to see doctors atCity of Hope, a Los Angeles-area health system. More than 380,000 of the Seattle-based company ’s employees and families across the U.S. are eligible for the travel benefit....Proponents say companies can get competitive prices and employees get better care —such as avoiding unnecessary treatment—by shopping around the country instead of always relying on local providers. Employer health plans, which cover roughly 153 million people in the U.S., struggle to command competitive prices and quality controls in some markets as health-care providers have consolidated and gained leverage in negotiations....By paying employees ’ way to travel for medical care, Amazon hope...
Source: Lab Soft News - Category: Laboratory Medicine Authors: Tags: Cost of Healthcare Diagnostics Healthcare Innovations Medical Consumerism Public Health Radiology Source Type: blogs