Digital health entrepreneurs have cottoned onto the fact that price transparency is a hot feature for their platform/app/website. Collaborations and acquisitions are providing a way for many more companies to provide it in various formats.
HealthiestYou reflects that trend. The Scottsdale, Arizona-based company provides its telehealth services mainly to employers, but individuals can also access its recently launched app.
I met co-founder Scott Sanford at South by Southwest earlier this month. He walked me through its new app to help users schedule appointments online with licensed and credentialed physicians for treatment and consults through phone, video or email. It also gives users a set of price transparency tools through a collaboration deal with PokitDok.
The company formed a few years ago from the merger of HealthiestYou and HealthNowMD. Its origins date back to 2007 when Dr. Kelly Traver started the company soon before authoring a book on patient engagement and the connections between brain chemistry and behavior change called The Healthiest You. Jim Prendergast is the CEO and co-founder.
It licensed Pokitdok’s application programming interfaces so users can look up market prices for treatments, specialists in their area and the ability to check their insurance eligibility for treatment. It includes 150 payers covering 90 percent of the market, Sanford said. Users can also check pharmacy drug prices in their area.
It also provides alternative treatment options and links up users to a network for treatments and consults through a phone, email or video connection. Users can schedule appointments with them online. It also has ratings and recommendations for those doctors to help users choose a doctor. It provides the app through iTunes app store and Google Play.
Sanford said the company would soon add dermatologists, behavioral health specialists and second opinion services for video consults.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
“We want this to be the go-to service for all [our users’] healthcare needs,” he said.
HealthiestYou isn’t the only telemedicine collaboration from PokitDok. It also supports Doctor on Demand. Companies have also purchased price transparency like Vitals, which acquired Compass Healthcare Advisers to add transparency tools to its physician finder service.
Entrepreneurs, employers and the government are counting on consumers using these kind of price transparency tools to factor cost into their healthcare decisions. Although that kind of thinking hasn’t yet permeated mainstream consumer practice, the hope is that as consumers become more aware of these tools, they will use them more readily.
