Radiology startup Covera health struck its first partnership with an insurer. The startup uses analytics to identify radiologists that are more likely to find an accurate diagnosis.
Last year, Covera launched a radiology centers of excellence program with Walmart to help reduce the wide variation in diagnoses and outcomes for its employees. Now, it will work with Premera Blue Cross as an extension of its centers of excellence strategy. Premera will offer the new benefit to its fully insured members and self-insured companies starting in January.
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“About two years ago, Premera started down the path of promoting centers of excellence to be able to drive our members to the highest quality, most cost-efficient options for surgery,” Premera VP of Product and Market Solutions Rick Abbott said in a phone interview. “One thing we didn’t have perspective on is whether or not that surgery should be occurring.”
Imaging is a big indicator as to whether a patient will have a surgery, such as spine surgery for low back pain, Abbott said.
“We started looking in the market, and it was very hard to find an entity that is assessing quality around imaging,” he added.
Covera CEO Ron Vianu founded the company in 2017, with the goal of generally reducing misdiagnoses. He ended up focusing on radiology because it has a big influence on what happens downstream.
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“All specialties take that information and use it to create a treatment plan for the patient,” he said. “A mistake in that juncture of that magnitude has a big impact on the patients’ likelihood of getting better.”
Most people think of radiology as a commodity — they don’t realize there’s variability in quality, Vianu said. But according to a white paper published by Covera, MRIs and CT scans have found error rates of 30% or more for complex diagnoses.
“It’s an underappreciated problem that we’re bringing to light,” he said.
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