HealthAdvocate is a relatively new company that is making a business (and by all accounts a fairly successful one) by helping consumers deal with the increasingly complex, frustrating, convoluted world of health care. I don’t have any personal experience with them, but their approach and business model makes sense.
They sell their services to employers, TPAs, insurers, unions, and other organizations as an add-on to employee benefit programs. The service, which is billed on a per employee per month basis of $1-$4, provides several benefits:
1. assists employees in locating health care providers with specific experience and expertise
2. negotiates with health plans for coverage and payment for specific procedures and treatment
3. facilitates claims handling by working with providers and health plans
As Tom Schell of Paradigm Health puts it, ” this type of service offering will be the norm in several years as companies look to get more bang out of their healthcare dollar — since it enables the users to maximize the coverage they currently have and increase the overall patient satisfaction level.”
I agree. “Consumerism”, patient-directed health care, and all the other “make the patient responsible for their own healthcare” efforts have one major obstacle – people are mystified, overwhelmed, and frustrated by healthcare processes and requirements. And it is not likely to get any better. The worse it gets, the more valuable HealthAdvocate and similar firms will become.
Feb
16
