Digital Disruption

Healthcare plans are easy when one doesn’t need to use them, but navigating a plan to receive needed care can prove challenging. Ryan Coplon, Co-Founder & President of HealthWallet, believes there is a better way to make order out of the healthcare chaos, and that’s through HealthWallet’s smartphone app. He spoke with Kevin Stevenson about HealthWallet’s unique approach to giving people the healthcare access they desire when they need it. Coplon’s background comes from the employee benefits and health plan architecture, and that experience shaped his ideas on ways in which a better health plan program could benefit those in need of options. “We realized the more progressive we got with our plan design and infrastructure, the more confused our plan members got,” Coplon said. “So, I saw an opportunity to partner with my co-founder now, in collaboration with the health plan that we managed.” After a year of development, they created an easy platform to drive utilization at the plan level. Once their idea solved these issues, Coplon and his partner recognized the potential to mainstream this idea.

HealthWallet CEO Ryan Coplon was recently featured on healthcare industry podcast "Highway to Healthcare". He spoke with with host David Kemp about healthcare customer education and how to manage user expectations in the current marketplace.

In commercial health insurance, innovations are taking place to re-imagine health plan design. Daniel Corliss, Chief Executive Manager and Founding Partner at BSP (Business Stimulus Partners), and DC Angel spoke with Digital Disruption’s Hilary Kennedy about the changes he’s seeing. “A lot is going on, but some of the critical components that are teed up for us today are the transparency laws that have taken effect,” Corliss said. These changes make hospital reimbursements and their contracts with different insurance providers non-secretive. “And so, every hospital system in the United States is supposed to be posting their contracts and their cash prices for all of their chargemaster services.” Corliss said the current changes help determine the healthcare innovators worthy of investment from the venture capital side. “I love the VC space because I can identify health tech entrepreneurs and founders that are creating awesome business models, technology, and products and services for the health plans that I serve,” Corliss said. “If I see something that I really like, and I see a startup that they’re doing things sustainably, ethically, and responsibly, and I want to help promote their growth and their success, I can invest capital into that company and then also insert them into the healthcare ecosystems and channel partnerships, to get them to rapid, scalable growth for that technology.” Sometimes, Corliss said, innovators get stuck because they have great technology but don’t know what to do with it or how to make the right connections to bring the technology into the marketplace in a scalable way. That’s where businesses like Health Wallet can help make sense of the technology and put it to use.

Inaccessibility to low-cost health insurance is a fact of life for many people, as well as employers who want to offer part-time and 1099 workers solutions. Where can people turn to when they want affordable healthcare coverage? Charlie Geiselhart, CRO of Healthcare2U, spoke with Daniel Litwin about how more companies and people are considering new, out-of-the-box solutions. When faced with selecting a healthcare coverage plan for employees, companies may have options, but they may not always be viable. Healthcare2U is a membership-based, direct primary care organization that provides employers, brokers and patients with complete primary and urgent care nationwide. “From an employer’s perspective, there are alternatives out there, but they’re costly,” Geiselhart said. “The high-deductible plan’s been out there for a long time. For an employee, it's expensive to buy coverage. It’s expensive to use coverage. So, a lot of people are going without coverage.” Geiselhart said that, with all the choices available, it can be challenging to navigate the space. “The layperson doesn’t understand how insurance operates, so what we’ve decided to do is do a lot of handholding through our coverage and our program that allows them to make one phone call and access care,” Geiselhart said. This access, Geiselhart said, is essential. When it comes to issues surrounding healthcare coverage, costs, etc., the average person wants help and needs advice and expertise regarding navigating a world they typically spend their time avoiding. Healthcare brokers recognize that they have traditional coverage offerings for many employers and employees. Still, those traditional offerings leave a large pool of people off the table. Those left outside looking in still want access to healthcare coverage. “There are a lot of brokers operating in the traditional sense, but there’s new and exciting alternatives that a lot of brokers haven’t explored,” Geiselhart said. Healthcare2U is one such possibility.

The rising costs of prescription medications in the U.S. are top of mind for anyone who relies on daily doses for their health. Between 2000 and 2017, some studies put the prescription drug cost increases in the U.S. as high as 76%. So, what are consumers to do?