How are you going to compete with insurance companies who have all of the data, existing relationships will their entire networks of providers and pre-existing negotiated rates with providers? Insurers are already creating local provider specific networks to serve this type of need and they have the largest incentive to drive procedure costs down - because it allows them to drive their rates down, increasing business or accounting for the losses they're suffering due to the ACA.<p>How will you protect your business when they decide to cut out the middle-man(you) and begin working with their networks directly to renogotiate procedure costs and kick-back discounts to employers for using these selective Cost+Quality networks? Truth is they're already doing this.<p>EDIT: My points may be moot - Are you only working with self-insured companies? That's the only thing that makes sense here given that you're splitting costs with the employer.
Here's why I'd be skeptical of using this service if I were a large, self-insured employer. If I understand right, the model consists of making it easy for employees to find cheap medical providers. However, am I right in understanding that it also makes it easy for employees to actually find those providers?<p>I.e., absent this service, would employees find it considerably more difficult to get treatment? (The article doesn't exactly say this, but hints in that direction.)<p>If so, I'd be concerned that it induces employees to consume more medicine. So while one might save money on cost per procedure, the # of procedures would go up.<p>(Due to RAND/Oregon, we also know it's unlikely that marginal increases in medical consumption would improve health, so regardless of how much I might care about my employees, this would be a bad thing.)
Where is your list of providers? That's usually the first thing I'd need to check when considering a new insurance plan.<p>My current insurance only has a small list of specialists in my area, and only one who was actually accepting patients and didn't have a 3 month wait list.