In an effort to increase price transparency for healthcare, laws have been passed to provide consumers with more cost information, but it remains difficult to obtain.Now, WHO, including Hospitals, with compliance issues With rules, companies love healthcare pricing platforms Turquoise Health Vows to help.
On Wednesday, the San Diego-based startup Announce It raised $20 million in a Series A round led by existing investor Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) to make transparent pricing ubiquitous in healthcare. The company partners with payers and providers to provide healthcare pricing data and offers patients a free search engine to view hospital prices. It plans to make more pricing data available through its search engine soon, when payers will be required to share the data for all providers and care facilities starting July 1.
Pulling the curtain on healthcare pricing is easier said than done, admits the company’s co-founder and CEO Chris Severn. That’s why investing is so important. He said the money would help pay for the back-end work and software needed to understand the real cost of something as simple as a colonoscopy — a single procedure that costs a facility fee, a doctor’s procedure and anesthesia, And it must be determined what the patient’s health plan pays for each expense.
“Building software that makes it easy to get instant quotes — that’s what we’re focused on,” Severn said.
The main difference in healthcare pricing transparency today is that providers and payers have no choice.There are Prevent unexpected medical expenseshospital is Pricing required up frontand, starting July 1, health plans will have to Give patients access to pricing information.
“The situation has changed dramatically now,” Severn said. “We have more favorable federal legislation on our side,”
He sees Turquoise Health’s latest raise as a sign of investment in companies working to increase transparency in healthcare pricing.
“This really marks a new commitment from the investment community to transparency in healthcare pricing,” he said.
In addition to a16z, Bessemer, Box Group and new investor Tiger Global also contributed to Turquoise Health’s Series A round. Julie Yoo, a16z general partner, will join Turquoise Health’s board of directors.
According to the company, Turquoise Health also announced that it has launched its direct contracts platform Clear Contracts, a software-as-a-service platform that simplifies the direct contract process between suppliers and buyers in anticipation of July 1 payments Person rate disclosure. Ultimately, the company is working to make pricing data more readily available and therefore easier to negotiate contracts, Severn said.
Other companies also Deloitte arrive Accenture Provide pricing data to help healthcare organizations understand costs and negotiate accordingly.
But Severn said his company is trying to make the data more accessible to health care providers of all sizes. While its own pricing varies, the company takes into account geographic areas—such as a small city, not a statewide—for which providers may want pricing data and bill accordingly, he said.
“We’re trying to promote a healthy healthcare economy — something that never existed,” he said.
Photo: Adventurer, Getty Images
