Healthcare technology company Accolade has acquired MD Insider to help launch a new vertical called Accolade Total Care, which is meant to give members insight into provider cost and quality.
Accolade, which was has raised more than $217 million from investors including Comcast, McKesson and Andreessen Horowitz, has developed a care navigation platform sold to employers meant to direct workers to the appropriate care, in an effort to control downstream medical spending.
Accolade has signed up major corporations as customers including Lowe’s, Comcast and Amerigas.
The company’s technology uses a combination of tools and human health assistants to help members make informed healthcare decisions. Accolade touts its nurse assistants as key to understanding member’s holistic health and filling in information about a patient’s personal situation and social factors that can affect care.
Accolade Total Care is meant to ease the headache of finding a high-quality physician by making provider quality and cost measures available to both Accolade members, as well as the company’s care concierges, who can help direct patients to the doctor that is best for them.
The new product was enabled by the acquisition of MD Insider, a Los Angeles startup that analyzes health data to produce physician quality scores giving patients insight on which clinicians to go to for appointments and procedures.
These quality measurements are mined through access to claims data, as well as personalized characteristics including diagnosis, procedure and condition-specific clinical experience, network status, education, and risk-adjusted outcome metrics such as complications, readmission rates, and length of stay.
While price transparency has been promoted as an avenue to increase consumer choice and competition in healthcare, an important aspect of helping individuals make better healthcare choices is have quality measures alongside costs.
Accolade said the new product – which is expected to launch in early 2020 – can be especially helpful to patients managing multiple conditions, generally the highest risk and highest cost population for employers.
“The healthcare consumer needs a fundamentally new experience – that’s transparent, efficient and personalized so they can get precise, high-quality care every time,” Accolade CEO Rajeev Singh said in a statement.
“It starts with selecting top-notch doctors—both primary care physicians and specialists, whether an oncologist, surgeon, behavioral health provider or any other. Then each person’s care must be coordinated to avoid errors and inefficiency, which is especially challenging for those managing one or more conditions.”
Photo: Kritchanut, Getty Images
