COLUMBIA, SC – BlueCross Blue-Shield of South Carolina is boosting its consumer transparency through two new Web tools.

San Francisco-based Med-Vantage, Inc. will provide the Blues plan with its HealthSmart Enhanced Provider Directory and Measures Exchange. HealthSmart Enhanced Provider Directory is a Web-based provider search tool that helps users in choosing their provider based on needs, quality of care and cost.

 “We are in a unique position to use comprehensive patient care data as an objective basis to provide our customers more information about our provider network,” said Laura Long, MD, vice president of clinical quality and health management for BCBS of South Carolina.

“The real market differentiator will be how health plans engage their members and providers using this information for better outcomes,” she added.

Measures Exchange is a hosted Web-based application tdesigned to assist health plans in communicating measures to their physicians. It also manages versioning and provides cross-mapping to conditions and national standards.

“We are excited to have BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina as a customer and look forward to working closely with them to establish uniformity and value in quality and cost transparency for the Blues family,” said Peter Goldbach, MD.

Goldbach is the CEO of Med-Vantage.