Believing that a free, transparent healthcare marketplace could complement traditional plan-based solutions for consumers, HealthCost was formed when six colleagues joined forces in 2016. The colleagues had different backgrounds but all wanted the tech startup to bring simple, borderless, and market driven choices to every consumer for the most common healthcare needs.
HealthCost, the only network now offering an open healthcare marketplace for selling, comparing, and soon to lock in healthcare costs, has just launched the website www.HealthCost.com to give control back to patients and providers.
Through the website and mobile app, HealthCost allows providers to set their own market rates and patients are now able to shop, compare, and eventually lock in specific rates that fit their needs.
Through www.HealthCost.com, patients can search for the exact cost for individual healthcare procedures. While other search tools only share average regional rates, HealthCost openly displays actual costs from each individual doctor and the facility where the doctor performs the procedure. Consumers can also compare how costs for the same procedure change from facility to facility.
Access to the network is open to all which gives any consumer the ability to shop and compare healthcare costs independently for out-of-network rates that have traditionally worked against consumer freedom.
Through the website, healthcare providers can now expand beyond their current health plan networks and reach new traditionally unreachable patients. Before HealthCost, providers struggled to reach the millions of uninsured, self-insured small businesses, along with out-of-network, and other self-pay consumers.
When providers join the HealthCost Networks, they have the freedom to control their rates based on the true value of their medical education, experience in caring for patients, and the quality of the facility and staff.
William Moore Founding Partner at HealthCost said, “While open pricing and comparison shopping exists in every other area of our economy, up until now, you won’t find that possible in healthcare. We’re completely changing the patient and provider relationship by putting both in control of healthcare costs.”