City of Fort Worth Helps Employees Get ‘Right Care at Right Time’
Joanne Hinton, Fort Worth’s Benefits Manager, has been championing Lantern since the city launched the surgery program for all plannable procedures in 2017. With over 6,000 employees and nearly 900 under-65 retirees relying on the city’s health plan, they knew they needed a solution that worked for everything from knee replacements to spine surgeries and tonsillectomies.
“Part of our commitment is to get employees to the right care at the right time,” Hinton says. “I trust Lantern. I had two different surgeries myself and a really good experience.”
That trust is paying off. The City of Fort Worth has seen 95%+ member satisfaction rate. In 2024 alone, this partnership saved the health plan $77.87 per employee per month (PEPM), racking up a lifetime savings of $28.6 million.
Hinton even says after her Lantern-facilitated carpal tunnel surgery, she was feeling good enough to attend a Pearl Jam concert five hours later.
“It was a very, very successful experience for me and my people love it,” she adds. When your employees are singing Lantern’s praises, you know the program is a success.
The City of Fort Worth says a big part of that success is Lantern’s dedication to focusing on quality care and ensuring providers within their Network of Excellence are vetted at an individual level. Jason Tibbels, MD, Lantern’s Chief Medical Officer, says that includes looking at hundreds of metrics like numbers of procedures performed, complication rates, readmissions and avoiding unnecessary surgeries.
For musculoskeletal conditions alone, Fort Worth has seen a 46% surgical avoidance rate, meaning nearly half of patients exploring surgery through Lantern found a more appropriate, non-surgical path to recovery.
“Often the right care at the right time is no care,” Tibbels says. “If you had a surgery that you didn’t need, even if it went well, that is not a good outcome.”
Part of our commitment is to get employees to the right care at the right time. I trust Lantern. I had two different surgeries myself, and a really good experience.”
City Chooses Lantern’s Cancer Care Program
When the City of Fort Worth saw two high-cost cancer claims in the past few years, they knew they needed to find a solution to help. Hinton says when the city overpays, it trickles down. “There were years when I first started when we got no pay increases, except for police and fire. It affects employees and also becomes impossible to recruit and hire talent,” Hinton says.
More importantly, they realized they needed to expand cancer care to help employees navigate the complexities. “Cancer is hard and it affects everybody in the family,” Hinton says, recalling her own sister’s battle with leukemia and trying to navigate the bewildering medical maze. That kind of experience, she says, stays with you and fuels a drive to help others battling cancer.
“Fast forward to now—we expanded our partnership with Lantern to help people get the best cancer care treatment,” Hinton says. She appreciates Lantern’s oncology nurses and social workers who guide employees throughout their journey and help them get the best care from the highest-quality specialists faster—with the first provider visit typically averaging 10 days or less.
This accelerated access to cancer care is key, Dr. Tibbels says, because medical research shows there’s a 10% decrease in 5-year survival rates when treatment is delayed by 21 days or more.
“If someone were to pin me down and ask, ‘What is the one metric or most important thing in cancer that predicts outcome?’ I will tell you that it’s time to treatment,” he says. Dr. Tibbels also points out that while a small slice of the population (around 2%) might be battling cancer, it can eat up about 20% of healthcare budgets.
Hinton says she appreciates that members have access to Lantern-vetted oncologists both within the community and NCI-designated cancer centers when they need to travel for care. “I’ll say it again… we’ve got to get people to the right place at the right time for the right money,” she says.
If someone were to pin me down and ask, ‘What is the one metric or most important thing in cancer that predicts outcome?’ I will tell you that it’s time to treatment.
Fort Worth Lowers Total Medical Spend While Helping Employees Navigate Complexities of Care
By steering employees toward truly appropriate, high-quality care, Lantern isn’t just improving health; it’s lowering trend. Getting the right diagnosis and treatment plan from the start can stop cancer from progressing unnecessarily, saving an average of $54,000 each time. Keeping someone out of the ER? That’s around $22,000.
The City of Fort Worth has seen a return on its investment with an almost 11% reduction in total medical spend since launching Lantern. The city also makes it easy for employees to choose Lantern, with services covered 100% for PPO or EPO plans, and only requiring the deductible for HDHP. “Our employees have really embraced this because who doesn’t like the free?” says Hinton, adding that they only make bariatrics mandatory under the plan.
But Lantern offers more than just clinical smarts and cost savings. In a healthcare system that can feel impersonal and impossibly complex, they provide a human touch. “What people are really looking for from the system…is people just want an advocate,” Dr. Tibbels says.
Getting trustworthy guidance is priceless. “We’re making sure that our employees are getting the right information,” Hinton emphasizes, a stark contrast to her family’s past struggles for clarity during her sister’s cancer diagnosis.
