New York, March 7, 2024 — NFP, a leading property and casualty broker, benefits consultant, wealth manager and retirement plan advisor, announced today it has developed TPNetTM, a proprietary price transparency tool that delivers data-driven, actionable insights to help employers control healthcare costs. TPNet is designed to help employers, payers and third-party providers utilize the complex transparency data set to gain visibility into commercial healthcare pricing information.
“We’re very excited to be first to market on a cost containment solution designed to bring visibility, price accountability and quality metrics to employers seeking low-cost, high-value, high-performing networks for their employees and qualified dependents,” said Kim Bell, head of Health & Benefits, NFP. “Having the capacity to assess negotiated rates by provider, procedural code and carrier is a measure of access employers have never had before TPNet.”
TPNet’s comprehensive tool stack aggregates pricing from providers, facilities and payers. It then enhances the data with quality metrics, claims payments, cash pay and CMS Medicare for benchmarking. The tool also helps employers with broader ERISA fiduciary responsibilities imposed by the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.
"TPNet exemplifies product innovation in the provider network space,” said R. John Cooper, Chief Growth Officer, S&S Healthcare Ltd., an NFP client. “The ability to compare network allowable fees through an independent lens truly empowers the independent TPA and supporting broker community. For many years this has been an area with very little transparency. TPNet provides much needed data on the delta that may or may not exist between networks on a given set of claims. The word we would use is ‘evolutionary.’"
E. Heidi Cottle, NFP’s national practice leader, Cost Containment Strategies, led the development of TPNet, which gathers publicly posted price transparency data with the enhanced data set to build a first-of-its-kind look into commercial medical pricing as a new business intelligence tool. These insights help employers better understand the true cost of care and compare it against what they’re currently paying, resulting in savings opportunities. NFP introduced TPCompare, a price transparency tool for healthcare delivery systems, in June 2023.
“We designed TPNet, in part, to minimize the disruption that employers, healthcare delivery systems, payers and carriers are facing in the new healthcare transparency environment,” said Cottle. “In much the same way employers have a fiduciary responsibility to provide well-researched 401(k) options for employees, TPNet helps organizations create a verifiable and well-developed process that in turn helps them build a foundation to meet their growing fiduciary responsibilities.”