From CFO.com and the Economist:
[The rise in healthcare costs] is also encouraging the creation of all sorts of health-related advisory and intermediary companies that help care providers, insurers, and patients save money. A company called Vitals approaches employees on behalf of their company’s health plan, and offers them cash rewards, and a taxi, if they agree to be treated at a cheaper provider.
The sums to be saved can be astonishing: a new cost-comparison tool created by Blue Cross Blue Shield, a big alliance of private health insurers, has found that a colonoscopy with a biopsy costs $8,489 at one clinic in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, but just $928 at another provider in Greensboro, only 50 miles or so away.
Cohealo offers a “sharing economy” solution for hospitals and clinics wanting to make the best use of expensive equipment, in much the same way as Airbnb helps people with spare rooms fill them with paying guests. Doximity is trying to be a Facebook for doctors, letting them refer patients and discuss treatments securely without the blizzard of faxes they rely on today.
Grand Rounds is a sort of medical Match.com: an online matchmaker that pairs patients with specialists. As in other industries, administrators are being tempted to switch to renting software and data storage in the online “cloud”: Athenahealth, a seller of medical back-office software, is trying to get doctors and hospitals to move patients’ health records onto its cloud-based service. ...
