Vitals’ acquisition of Compass Healthcare Advisers brings together two criteria that consumers can use to determine whether they want to see one physician over another: what other patients think of them and the price tag for their procedures.
The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
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Vitals CEO Mitch Rothschild told MobiHealthNews:
“Anytime you decide on making a purchase decision, which we’ve done a lot of analytics and breakdown on, you’re going to buy based on three factors: quality, cost, and availability…Whether you’re buying an airline ticket or a car — how good is it, what’s the cost, and what’s the availability? We are trying to make the same three factors available for healthcare. We already solved the quality problem. You can go on Vitals or any of our sites and see which doctors are good, what patients think of them, all that kind of stuff. We’ve now solved for the cost side. As far as availability, we’re just starting to get into online appointments, seeing when doctors are available, and how long you have to wait before you see them, which we post now.”
Compass gives cash incentives when users pick lower priced providers. It estimates that “the average patient” saves $635 each time they use its SmartShopper service and it says 65 percent of users turn into repeat customers, according to a company statement.
The bootstrapped healthcare price transparency business started in Kentucky and New Hampshire but its deal with Vitals will take a lot further, especially where Vitals has a significant customer base such as Illinois, Massachusetts and Texas, according to Forbes.
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The digital health sector is ripe for consolidation. Vitals deal with Compass makes a lot of sense and strengthens a reviews of physician practices with more vital information. Although Castlight Health has received a lot of attention for its price transparency tools, it has also been ramping up its business with other services, such as telemedicine, through collaborations with companies offering complementary services.
