Harvard Pilgrim CEO Eric Schultz Discusses Transparency with Health Business Group's David Williams

BOSTON - May 21, 2013 - PRLog -- Eric H. Schultz, President & Chief Executive Officer of Harvard Pilgrim Health Care, Inc. recently spoke with the Health Business Blog about price and quality transparency. Audio and text versions of the interview, conducted by Health Business Group President David E. Williams, can be found at http://www.healthbusinessblog.com/2013/05/harvard-pilgrim-ceo-eric-schultz-discusses-consumer-engagement-and-transparency-transcript/

The interview is one of a series of high-profile podcasts conducted by Williams on the Health Business Blog. Recent guests have included C-level executives from Kaiser Permanente, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, AthenaHealth, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, ikaSystems, and Healthbox.

Williams draws on his two decades of experience as a health care business consultant and board member to probe deeply into business and policy topics with senior executives. He has conducted more than 100 podcasts on the Health Business Blog over the past five years, in addition to his daily commentaries on health care business and policy. The blog has more than 18,000 RSS readers and its Twitter feed @HealthBizBlog is followed by close to 7,000 people.    Harvard Pilgrim, which has been named the best health plan in the United States for nine years in a row, is rolling out a variety of consumer transparency tools including Now iKnow(SM), a cost and quality calculator powered by Castlight Health and SaveOn, which rewards members financially for choosing lower cost providers for elective, outpatient procedures.    In the interview, Schultz describes what consumer engagement means to Harvard Pilgrim, lays out his preferred roles for government and the market, introduces the concept of "aided transparency" to ease consumers into greater engagement, laments the lack of transparency tools available to referring physicians, and discusses why Harvard Pilgrim decided to become Castlight's first health plan customer.     "Podcast interviews on the Health Business Blog provide an opportunity for health care leaders to share their thoughts in much greater depth than the typical soundbites favored by traditional media," said Williams.    # # #  About the Health Business Blog:    The Health Business Blog is an award-winning daily weblog written by David E. Williams, President of the Health Business Group, a strategy consulting firm. The Health Business Blog has been published every business day since 2005 at http://www.healthbusinessblog.com    About the Health Business Group:    Health Business Group is a leading strategy consulting boutique advising companies, non-profits and investors in health care services, health information technology, and pharmaceutical services. Client service professionals average more than 15 years of health care consulting, industry and start-up experience. For more information visit http://www.healthbusinessgroup.com    About Harvard Pilgrim Health Care:    Harvard Pilgrim Health Care is a not-for-profit health plan that provides a variety of insurance plan options and self-funding arrangements to more than one million members in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Maine. For more information visit https://www.harvardpilgrim.org/