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MONEYBALL MEDICINE PRICE QUALITY TRANSPARENCY

Say you want to open a new bank account. Today, you can research which bank offers the highest interest rates, has the best customer service rating, and then sign up online, deposit checks, transfer funds, and check your balance—all from your smartphone. If you need help, you can connect to a person or engage a chatbot from the bank’s app or website. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

What’s (generally) not required? Going to a bank branch during business hours or filling out paper applications. Technology has transformed the banking industry, mere decades after the first ATMs were installed and online and remote banking has become ubiquitous. Shopping for a home mortgage or car loan has been similarly changed. Consumers can shop for the best rates online, get approved, even close the deal from the convenience of their home or a coffee shop and do this all with the highest level of security.

But what if you need to find a new primary care doctor that not only takes your insurance, but is accepting new patients? Or you need to know the costs ahead of time for surgery for that torn rotator cuff? Or you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and want to find out what is the best treatment?

While technological advances, like MRI machines and DNA sequencing have revolutionized aspects of patient care, healthcare has lagged behind using technology to measure outcomes and streamline processes, unlike the banking or mortgage industries. But that’s changing. The healthcare system of the future must implement technological solutions to better disseminate information, aggregate and analyze data, and cut costs, creating significant opportunities for startups and existing companies to change the industry.

Price and quality transparency are big buzzwords in today’s healthcare market. Though the cost of health insurance has been a part of the public discourse for several months, insurance is just one component of a financially complex web.

Patients often have little understanding about the true cost of health services or drugs, because payers negotiate contracts on behalf of members, but those details are kept secret. The emphasis is on staying “in network” for care—a big problem when shopping around could save thousands, even when paying higher out of network costs.

Patients in the individual healthcare market and those without insurance coverage may find getting a straight answer to the question, “how much does it cost?” is nearly impossible.

But what if you need to find a new primary care doctor that not only takes your insurance, but is accepting new patients? Or you need to know the costs ahead of time for surgery for that torn rotator cuff? Or you’ve been diagnosed with cancer and want to find out what is the best treatment?

While technological advances, like MRI machines and DNA sequencing have revolutionized aspects of patient care, healthcare has lagged behind using technology to measure outcomes and streamline processes, unlike the banking or mortgage industries. But that’s changing. The healthcare system of the future must implement technological solutions to better disseminate information, aggregate and analyze data, and cut costs, creating significant opportunities for startups and existing companies to change the industry.

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