CLEVELAND – Medical Mutual of Ohio began offering Intuit’s Quicken Health Expense Tracker with Bill Pay capability to its 1.6 million members in October.

While it’s too early to track use, the tool’s value lies in educating members on their healthcare bills and strengthening network provider relations, as well as the co payer’s and market differentiation as an early adopter, said Robert Mau, MMO’s vice president of e-business.

Going forward, the tool should create additional visibility of particular services – for instance, enabling members to make more cost-informed choices, he said.

QHET will enable members to track and manage their healthcare services and billing as well as budget their flexible spending or health savings accounts for the following year, Mau said. The Bill Pay feature lets members automatically pay their bills, which helps providers get paid faster.

Providers also benefit by having educated patients because with confusion removed the number of bill-related calls to providers is expected to decline, Mau said.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the customer reaction for MMO is overwhelmingly positive,” said Carl Doty, vice president of Forrester Research. “There is pent-up demand to put this kind of capability in the hands of consumers – particularly those who are enrolled in high-deductible, account-based plan designs.”

Peter Karpas, president and division general manager of Intuit’s Quicken Health Group, agreed. Patients want to pay electronically, just as they do across other industries, he said. More importantly, as the cost of healthcare shifts to consumers, payers are offering tools to help employers and their employees understand the financial side of healthcare and help them make better decisions that impact their wallets, he said.

Doty thinks it will take a while for this capability to be ubiquitous, mainly because payer IT investments have slowed and payers are focused on pending healthcare reform legislation. “Must-have” capabilities that deliver cost-containment strategies and modifications to back-end technology for regulatory compliance are being prioritized. “For the time being, the perception in the market is that these point solutions for consumers are ‘nice-to-have,’” he said.

For MMO, however, having this capability will be a market differentiation that will serve as a retention tool, Mau said.

“There is a lot of potential for this tool,” he said.