Whether you call it the influence of the hospitality industry or the consumerization of health care (or both!), health IT companies with tools providing more price transparency for healthcare decisions see a growing consumer base. It’s only going to increase when people forced to make tougher decisions about their health care comparison shop more frequently.
In the latest demonstration of how this trend is resonating with investors, Vitals has raised $22 million in a Series C round from Piper Jaffray Merchant Banking, Cardinal Partners, Health Enterprise Partners, Milestone Ventures Partners and Greycroft.
The scheduling and doctor rating website attracts 13 million users per month, according to the company.
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In a phone interview with MedCity News, Vitals CEO Mitch Rothschild said the company, which employs 110, would use the funding to build services and grow its staff by 25 percent to 30 percent — across data and product support and engineering — rather than growing through acquisitions.
Among the services it plans to add are decision-support tools to help users make more informed health insurance decisions. “If you have ever tried to read a health insurance plan and didn’t get a headache, that would put you in a distinct minority,” said Rothschild. The services will help users understand the details of what these plans offer and what they don’t — sort of like a navigator.
Additional services will also supplement cost transparency. It will also add more personalized responses according to user search preferences. This summer it plans to add data for about 9,000 urgent care centers to the site, according to Rothschild.
The coming of health insurance exchanges will mean more opportunities for groups like Vitals to inform patients. But it will be interesting to see how helpful the information from Vitals and other companies will be to consumers and whether the quality of that information will be influenced by the partnerships they currently have with insurers.
