New West Health Services recently announced a partnership with a Utah firm that will bring a number of new features to the insurer's Web site that will not only make it easier for customers to access their insurance plans and pay their claims, but for New West to offer health tips and suggestions to its members to make them healthier and cut down on health-care costs.

Over the next couple of months, New West and HealthEquity will introduce several tools to the company's Web presence.

Several of the new Web features fostered by the alliance will simply make it easier for people to manage their insurance and health care -- the ability to pay bills online, for instance, either through a Health Savings Account or a linked bank account.

The site will also feature price comparisons for various treatments at various hospitals, culled from information collected by New West from the thousands of claims it processes.

With the increasing use of high-deductible health plans, Americans are taking a greater interest in what they're paying for health care and how it's delivered. The Montana Hospital Association recently announced a Web site that will offer similar price comparisons.

"The high deductible plans increase the awareness of the cost and the resources going into health care, and that increases interest because people want to make an informed choice," Kibbe said.

The New West site will also offer a health encyclopedia with information on more than 1,600 diseases and conditions, as well as a symptom checker members can use to look up more than 300 specific symptoms.

New West can also use members' information to tailor specific messages to each person, based on their health history and other considerations.

"We're trying to be pragmatic about what drives people's behavior," said CEO David Kibbe. "What interests them, and then use that to dive into other areas of health care."

For instance, the site can send messages to customers based on their medication history.

"Not only generic messages to drive them to use certain tools, but specific messages where we could tell them, 'Hey, it looks like you haven't filled a prescription,'" said Brad Benion, HealthEquity's director of product services.

The site may also offer suggestions for other medications to ask a doctor about, or suggest tests that might be helpful but haven't been performed.

Kibbe recognizes that the issue of an insurance provider offering medical advice is "a sensitive one."

New West recently called some members who showed signs of high blood pressure through their insurance claims, he said, and the response was mixed. Some were glad to have the advice, while others said they hadn't discussed hypertension with their physicians and wondered why the company was calling.

"It's just about being respectful of the individual and not pushing too hard," he said. "We've got a lot of knowledgeable, competent physicians and nurses, but we don't have enough of them seeing our members at the right time or place."

Owned by several hospitals across Montana, New West has more than 41,000 members and serves more than 600 individual businesses.

Reporter John Harrington: 447-4080 or john.harrington@helenair.com