Health IT, Startups

Amino seeks to deepen physician search engine data with new status

The consensus based entity certification dictates that it appoint a board to review and approve additional measures designed to help consumers better understand physician performance.

amino-filter-c-section-rate(1)Amino, a healthcare startup that wants to boost transparency on performance data for physicians to help consumers make more informed decisions when they search for physicians, unveiled a new qualification as a consensus-based entity. The idea is to deepen the level of information consumers can access and further distinguish it from the multitudes of physician search engines.

David Vivero, the CEO of Amino, explained the obscure ACA acronym in an interview with MobiHealthNews.

“[Consensus-based entity] is a very technical term to describe a very basic idea, which is Medicare wants to make sure that if you’re going to profile physicians the way that we do, that you take a rigorous approach designing the measures you use.”

Although Amino pointed out that it is already rolling out new measures such as the recently introduced a risk-adjusted C-section rate for almost all active OB/GYN physicians in the country, the consensus based entity certification dictates that it appoint a board to review and approve additional measures.

Part of the process also involves submitting these measures to the public for review and comment for 30 days.

The only other group with a CBE qualification is the National Committee for Quality Assurance — a designation it received in 2014.

Last month, Amino tweaked its search engine so that users could view practices in relation to where they live or where they work. It also added a preference filter so that users could view search results for procedures such as mammography, hip replacement, and pregnancy based on  whether a doctor’s rate for the given procedure is higher than, lower than, or similar to other doctors nearby.

In response to emailed questions, a spokeswoman said it would submit other vetted decision factors to the board in the next six months.

Photo: Flickr user somegeekintn