(The Center Square) – The state health plan in North Carolina on Wednesday announced an expansion of a plan to lower surgery costs.
Novant Health, headquartered in Winston-Salem, has agreed to participate in the program offered by private company Lantern.
State health plan members can now have non-emergency surgery at Novant locations throughout the state with no out-of-pocket costs.
“This will significantly broaden access to no-cost, high-quality surgical care for hundreds of thousands of plan members across the state,” State Treasurer Brad Briner’s office said in a release.
The partnership with Lantern is part of an effort to lower state health care costs by steering patients in the state health plan to high quality providers in exchange for lower costs. The incentive for patients is that they can avoid deductibles and co-pays by having the procedure at a facility that is part of the Lantern program.
The Lantern program has been “well received” by members of the state health plan, Briner said at a meeting of state leaders on Tuesday.
“But there simply aren’t enough providers in it,” Briner said at Tuesday’s meeting the Council of State.
Novant will offer orthopedics, spine, bariatrics, general surgery, heart and vascular care and women’s services, according to the release.
In the next few weeks, the state expects to announce additional providers that have decided to join the Lantern program, Loretta Boniti, Briner’s spokeswoman, told The Center Square.
As of Tuesday, 1,873 members of the state health plan have enrolled in the program since it was launched last fall and 378 have completed procedures, Boniti said.
“By aligning high clinical standards with a model that reduces out-of-pocket costs for state workers, we’re proving that quality and cost discipline can go hand in hand and setting a blueprint that other state health plans can follow,” Lantern CEO John Zutter said in a statement.
