The lack of price transparency in healthcare has been a source of frustration and puzzlement, but some startups see an opportunity to change that. Mobile health app developer Symcat has added a tool that lets people make more informed decisions about treatment costs.
Also known as Symptom based Computer Assisted Triage, Symcat’s app ranks the most likely medical conditions users have based on their symptoms. The new features include cost and quality metrics, such as how many times the provider does that procedure in a year. Users can apply that data to determine their best option. It also provides home care instructions, an appointment scheduler, and maps out urgent care and emergency rooms that are nearby.
The app also suggests care alternatives based on triage guidelines from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. It was developed by Craig Monsen and David Do, both Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine students and graduates of startup accelerator Blueprint Health.
There are more than 300 symptom checker apps, according to a report by IMS Institute for Healthcare Informatics. That mhealth trend means companies have to work harder to make their apps stand out.
With consumers shouldering more of the healthcare costs, there’s more activity to make it easier to discover what hospitals charge for procedures. In August, North Carolina passed a law that will publish the prices of the 140 most common in-patient, surgical and imaging services performed by every hospital in the state. CB Insights estimates that investors have pumped $400 million into companies in the name of adding or improving cost transparency in healthcare since 2010. CMS has also produced data on how much hospitals charge for certain procedures. On the flip side, hospitals point out that more than market forces costs, such as labor and capital costs and the level and type of care received by the patients treated by the hospital, according to a report by the American Hospitals Association.
[Photo credit: Healthcare costs by BigStock Photo]
