Healthline Networks Launches Surgical Procedure Guide for Total Knee Replacement

Consumer Decision Support Tool Empowers Patients by Providing In-depth Content, Surgery-Specific Hospital Quality Information, and Local Treatment Cost Estimates from Preparation through Rehabilitation

SAN FRANCISCO – October 8, 2012 — Healthline Networks today announced the launch of a new online consumer health resource, the Healthline Surgical Procedure Guide (SPG) for Total Knee Replacement Surgery.  This SPG is the most comprehensive decision support tool available for consumers who are considering, recovering from, or have had knee replacement surgery.  It provides patients with the most relevant up-to-date information available, assisting the more than 650,000 Americans who undergo a total knee replacement surgery annually in making decisions about the procedure.  Addressing all stages of the patient pathway, the SPG provides rich content and localized data to help consumers understand the costs, risks, and complications associated with total knee replacement and evaluate hospital quality and outcomes.

The development of the Healthline’s SPG platform was initially announced with the company’s participation in last year’s Health Data Initiative (HDI), led by the Department of Health & Human Services. Healthline has analyzed billions of anonymous medical records in order to bring highly accurate, surgery-specific, and data-driven information directly to the hands of consumers.  Going far beyond any consumer education site available, Healthline’s analysis of Medicare and private payer claims informs the SPG with insightful statistics about the pattern-of-care, and the complications and clinical outcomes for total knee replacement.  Such encompassing information about the pattern-of-care is not provided anywhere else on the web and is made possible by Healthline’s ability to longitudinally track millions of patients who have had a total or partial knee replacement.  

At the core of SPG, are two major decision support tools that allow users to estimate the cost of care and evaluate surgery-specific hospital quality information.  The SPG packages this hard-to-find data with in-depth content organized around the patient pathway:  consideration, preparation, recovery and rehabilitation, and living with an artificial knee.  Healthline’s original content on knee replacement includes videos featuring medical and industry experts on the procedure and artificial knee devices.  

 The two decision support tools within the SPG for total knee replacement are:

• Cost Estimator –Orients Patients to the Entire Timeline of Charge Incurring Events and Provides Local Out-of-Pocket Estimates– Unlike other cost transparency tools that generally focus only on the hospital stay and procedure, Healthline’s Cost Estimator helps consumers understand costs and visit frequency along the entire continuum of care, from the pre-surgical phase through the rehabilitation phase.  The estimator enables both Medicare and private insurance patients to identify average out-of-pocket costs for visits and services that are typically accrued within the three months before surgery through to a year after surgery, and also uses algorithms that consider additional patient characteristics that impact charges, such as age and pre-existing conditions.   

• Hospital Search –Provides Procedure-Specific Hospital Clinical Outcomes Data Previously Not Available on the Public Web– Current hospital search tools provide general quality scores and ambiguous procedure star ratings that are framed in terms of the national or state average.  Healthline’s Hospital Search facilitates relevant and robust decision making by allowing users to effectively compare hospitals in their local area.  Furthermore, it highlights surgery-specific clinical outcome and performance indicators for each individual hospital, including complication and revision rates. Exceptional data mining and analysis even makes it possible for Healthline to track and provide a hospital’s revision rate for knee replacement regardless of whether both surgeries (the initial and revision) took place at that hospital.  By providing procedure-specific outcomes data to patients considering surgery, Healthline aims to steer patients to surgeons practicing at hospitals with the best track record, therefore potentially reducing the chances of poor outcomes and the additional costs associated with complications or revision surgeries.

“The prospect of a total knee replacement surgery is daunting and expensive, and people often leave doctor visits with unanswered questions around the procedure, recovery process and associated costs,” said West Shell, III, chairman and CEO of Healthline Networks. “Healthline has layered a massive amount of patient data with consumer-friendly decision support tools to bring powerful information that can truly help consumers make tough decisions that can have a positive impact on their clinical outcome. Patients can rest assured that Healthline will provide quick access to the best medical data the web has to offer about their surgeries, in one clear resource, helping them to be confident and informed about any procedure.”

The Total Knee Replacement Surgical Procedure Guide can be found on Healthline.com, a comprehensive health information resource for consumers. Healthline plans to follow the launch with additional surgical procedures guides.

About Healthline Networks

Healthline Networks is the fastest growing provider of intelligent health information services, enabling 100 million consumers a month to make more confident, informed healthcare decisions.  The company's proprietary consumer healthcare taxonomy, the largest of its kind, powers a suite of intelligent health search, content and advertising services. Combining advanced search technology with deep medical expertise, Healthline partners with a network more than 50 trusted destination sites that include publishers, portals, search engines, employers and health plans. Headquartered in San Francisco and named to Deloitte's Technology Fast 500 in 2010 and 2011, Healthline is backed by Aetna, GE/NBC Peacock Fund, Investor Growth Capital, Kaiser Permanente, Reed Elsevier, U.S. News & World Report, and VantagePoint Venture Partners. For more information, visit http://www.healthlinenetworks.net.