Excellent, accessible surgery for your employees
Lantern connects your employees with the best surgeons while lowering your company’s healthcare spend.
Your Challenges
When your employees need surgery, they often don’t know where to turn for guidance. This can lead to unnecessary procedures, poorer outcomes, and higher costs for your organization.
Surgical cases make up 20% of healthcare spending, driven by a small subset of employees.1
Even as costs rise, complication and avoidable surgery rates haven’t moved—so cost doesn’t equal quality when it comes to surgery.
It’s tough for employees to navigate the system. Many of them struggle to know if they’re making the best choice.
Surgery with Lantern
Unlike traditional COEs that focus on a few complex procedures, Lantern covers all plannable procedures so more members can get quality care. When it comes to surgical services, our vetted network of excellent surgeons can perform:
- Joint replacements
- Bariatric surgeries
- Tonsillectomies
- Hysterectomies
- and thousands more
Measuring Our Impact
Our approach to building thoughtful national networks for care works. You don’t have to take our word for it, either. The results our clients experience every day speak for themselves.2
surgical avoidance for MSK
complication rate
of members drive less than 50 miles for care
Lantern is a solution that works.
Lantern ensures members and their loved ones get the best care possible through our curated Network of Excellence of top-performing specialists nationwide.
“We’ve had a number of individuals who have come to us and said they wouldn’t have been able to have surgery if it weren’t for this benefit.”
“Having a solution like Lantern removes barriers and helps our associates access affordable, high-quality care.”
“We obviously evaluate cost savings in any situation, but it’s not necessarily the priority here. The priority is providing the best care for our employees.”
The Lantern Advantage
We individually vet every provider, which helps ensure Lantern members have a less than 1% complication rate for surgery.
Our network includes more than 1,500 facilities across the United States and offers coverage for all plannable procedures.
Healthcare is complex. Lantern Care Advocates deliver timely support, earning Lantern an 85 NPS—well above the average for healthcare plans.
We believe quality care can be affordable, too. And it shows in our results. Clients working with Lantern see a 3% lower total medical spend on average.2
Lantern’s White-Glove Experience
Learn more about how our Care Advocates provide a premium member experience, every time.
We make it easier for members to get the surgical care they need.
The member journey starts with a phone call. Lantern members work with their Care Advocate, who will personally match them with excellent local surgeons in our network. Lantern Care Advocates can also:
- Answer questions about how benefits work
- Help schedule appointments
- Help with medical records and paperwork
"The way Lantern worked was how you would want insurance to work. For the first time since I’ve had insurance, something worked the way you would want it to. It was so easy and so turnkey."
Quality guides everything we do.
Providers and facilities who are part of Lantern pass a rigorous vetting process that goes beyond the typical questions. What’s the result? A network with a complication rate of <1%, compared to the industry average of 8-15%. Our surgeons:3
- Are licensed and board-certified
- Are fellowship-trained
- Meet volume of procedure goals year-over-year
- Pass a malpractice review
- Pass a reputational review
- Complete interviews with our team
Ready to talk? We’re here
Get in touch with our team to see how Lantern can elevate your company’s benefits.
Frequently Asked Questions: Surgery Benefits
What is a Center of Excellence (COE) for surgery?
A Center of Excellence for surgery provides employees access to rigorously vetted surgeons and facilities that consistently deliver better outcomes for complex surgical procedures. Lantern’s Network of Excellence includes high-quality community hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, allowing members to receive the right care in the most appropriate setting close to home.
How can employers lower MSK surgery costs?
Employers can lower musculoskeletal (MSK) surgery costs by connecting employees with high-quality surgeons, ensuring surgery is clinically appropriate and steering care to the right surgical setting. Lantern’s Network of Excellence combines surgeon-level quality screening, prospective bundled pricing and site-of-care optimization to reduce surgical costs by more than 55% compared to traditional carrier rates.
What surgical procedures are covered under a specialty care network?
Lantern’s specialty care network covers all plannable surgical procedures with no age or diagnosis exclusions. Covered surgical procedures include bariatrics, spine, joint replacement and other complex surgical categories, helping members find the right specialist for their specific condition.
How much can employers save with a specialty care surgery COE?
Employers can reduce surgical costs by more than 55% compared to traditional carrier rates with Lantern’s surgery COE.
Lantern also delivers:
- An average of $15+ per employee per month (PEPM) in surgical savings
- More than 85% hard-dollar savings
- 2x guaranteed ROI
How can I influence surgical decisions without interfering in employee care?
Employers and unions can influence better surgical decisions by offering guided access to trusted specialists. Lantern supports shared decision-making through surgical nurses, care advocates and evidence-based appropriateness reviews, ensuring treatment recommendations remain clinically driven.
What criteria makes a surgeon in a network "high-quality"?
Lantern selects high-quality surgeons using individual evaluations of procedural volume, outcomes, patient safety, clinical decision-making and patient-reported outcomes. Every surgeon is continuously monitored after joining the network, and Lantern surgeons average a 4.5 out of 5 Global Appropriateness Measures (GAM) score.
How do specialty care programs ensure surgery is truly necessary?
High-quality specialty care programs ensure surgery is necessary by evaluating whether an operation is the best clinical option before treatment begins. Lantern specialists follow evidence-based guidelines, use hundreds of real-time quality measures and recommend nonsurgical care when surgery is unlikely to improve outcomes.
Delivering the best-quality specialty care at scale
Surgery coverage is only one of the benefits Lantern offers, and partnering with Lantern for surgery, cancer and infusion care can help you deliver the best outcomes for your employees.