What:
Tenzing Health is a co-op of insured and uninsured healthcare consumers. Members get access to an individual counselor, who guides them through the system end-to-end, from finding the right healthcare provider or serivce, to negotiating a billing dispute. Basically, healthcare sherpas.
When:
Pilot launched in June.
Where:
St. Lukes Baptist Hospital in San Antonio, Texas.
Who:
Founder and CEO, Dr. James M.O. ("Jamo") Rubin. Previous companies:Medical Present Value, PTRx).
Why:
Tenzing may say its core service is customer serivce. And we like it that Tenzing is trying to alleviate the pain of navigating the healthcare system by offering consumers some serious hand-holding, in moments when they need it most. But the bigger value we see here, for systemic change, is Tenzing's enterprise play. Innovative providers who "go off the grid" by leaving the insurance-based system immediately face a crippling challenge: customer acquisition is difficult and costly when you don't have a health plan spoon-feeding you bodies. But Tenzing represents insured and unisured consumers. It is agnostic to health plans. Tenzing "guides" are only too happy to recommend a provider outside a health plan, if it fits the consumer's need. Need laproscopy? Tenzing will find the right clinic. Want concierge or "direct practice" primary care? Tenzing will find it for you. So Tenzing also represents a potentially powerful lead-generation engine for independent care providers who might otherwise be twisting in the wind. If it gives even a little nudge to the migration of patients from rigid insurance-based care over to more flexible and creative providers, Tenzing will be promoting innovation in the market place.
Cost:
< $ Free to consumers. Providers will ultimately pay for access to the co-operative.
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What:
A framework that employers and consumers can use to evaluate hospitals and clinics based on their ethical performance, in addition to procedural competence, to determine which hospitals overtreat.
When:
Debuting this month in a medical travel survery with HighRoads, a technology consultancy.
Where:
Boston, Mass.
Who:
Tom Emerick, Emerick Consulting with Lori Dustin, CMO, of HighRoads.
Why:
We like lists. Emerick's straigtforward questionnaires are designed to reveal whether a hospital or clinic is managed ethically, and whether the insitution performs unecessary procedures. Simply by applying Emerick's litmus tests, employers and consumers can determine whether a clinic is "transaction happy," and then vote with their feet, taking their healthcare needs to those hospitals and clinics that do not overtreat. Such grass roots decisions are the events that, ultimately, will force institutions to change -- and long before reform bills are in place, or any top-down healthcare overhaul is complete. And as always, surverys are cheap, portable -- infinitely scalable.
Cost:
< $ Sample ethical survey is free on healthspottr, courtesy of HighRoads.
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What:
BioIQ offers easy-to-use self-testing kits for diabetes and heart disease. At-risk workers receive the kits by mail, as directed by their health plan manager or employer.
When:
Originally founded in 2005 as a consumer retail site. Re-tooled, began pilot programs with large health plans, disease management companies and employers in January and July of 2009.
Where:
Currently distributed through 100 employers nationwide. Partner health providers and plans include Summit Health, United Health and Maxim Health. Disease management companies: HMC, Optum Health, Alere. BioIQ won't disclose ranks of individual users.
Who:
Justin Bellante and Raja Jindal.
Why:
At-home-screening is a critical part of self-care programs. Self-care is an important cost-saving tool in any worthwhile reform plan, especially when modeling for aging Baby Boomers. But pre-screening requires participation, which makes it particularly tricky among the populations that need it most; “at-risk” groups are typically the very ones most disengaged from healthcare in the first place. We like that BioIQ is taking a stab at the difficult task of reaching them. It is unclear whether the convenience of self-testing at home on your own schedule (no more waiting in a lab!) is enough to induce behavior change. BioIQ is wise to try to reach this crowd through the funnel of employers, who have a vested interest in it succeeding. We are less optimistic about BioIQ's retail strategy, but we view their attempt to reach consumers the 'Amazon way' as a valuable first step in the slow process of educating the public on what "retail health" may look like down the road.
Cost:
$ Test kits are less than $70 if purchased directly off BioIQ.com.
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Today we introduce another new healthspottr feature, eventspottr - our current events calendar.
It's hard to keep track of everything going on in healthcare. When our team began the preparatory work for launching healthspottr, we searched in vain for a place where the industry's main events were catalogued in aggregate. We found none, so we've built one.
Like all the content on healthspottr, our calendar is not an exhaustive resource. On eventspottr you'll find a curated digest of those healthcare conferences and events that really matter. We include global events. We will soon include events and dates that bear particular significance to the industry from Wall Street and from Capital Hill.
Each listing offers a brief description of the event and who attends, as well as links to official registration pages, for your convenience.
We invite you to send us your recommendations for these listings, including your own company or association events. We can't promise to include all submissions, but we will review them all, and publish those that best fit the needs of healthspottr readers.
We look forward to hearing from you. Thanks, and keep innovating ...
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As part of our ongoing effort to engage with the community of healthcare innovators, healthspottr will be hosting monthly Innovation Salons. These are evening events, where we gather together a group of healthcare entrepreneurs, investors, industry executives and care providers for an intimate meal. We picks a current topic or challenge facing the industry and over the course of the evening, our party discusses new ways to address it -- collectively, and through individual innovative efforts.
Our first dinner troupe considered the challenges facing primary care. Tonight, our second salon will debate the future of diagnostics and personalized medicine: "Diagnostics without Therapeutics: A Bride without a Groom?" We are privileged to host another experience-rich and diverse party tonight (our full guest list follows the jump). By way of a warm-up, below we share additional clips from our previous salon, "Reinventing Primary Care." Look for more videos next week ...
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