The Nashville Business Journal welcomes Chris McIntyre to his new position as director of product management at change:healthcare.

Check out the full article by downloading the PDF here.

The Nashville Business Journal published an article in October (that I somehow missed), highlighting Nashville’s push toward consumerism in health care.

Here is what they had to say about change:healthcare:

“Change:healthcare launched a new version of its Medstimate cost ratings tool in May. It features comprehensive pricing data for hospital inpatient and outpatient services.

“The feedback we’ve gotten from the providers is sort of mixed,” says Robert Hendrick, the company’s co-founder and chief operations officer. “We have providers that are understandably a little nervous about it because they feel like it’s exposing their prices. Then we have some relatively forward-thinking providers who are saying that this is information we need, too, because they’re not really consistent in their pricing. They’re looking for what is the market for health care services.”

The Nashville company was formed in 2006 by Hendrick and fellow health care executive Christopher Parks to simplify the medical bill-paying process through the company’s cornerstone MedBillManager tool.

Hendrick says the tools and data provided by change:healthcare are unique to the health care industry.

The company received $1 million from Nashville investment firm Solidus in 2007 and projects between $6 million and $9 million in revenue within three years, Hendrick says.

Change:healthcare is also marketing a new book titled “My Healthcare is Killing Me,” authored by Hendrick, Parks and Katrina Welty of the company’s management team. It is billed as a consumer’s guide to the complex health care industry and has been featured on CNN’s “House Call” medical program.

“The cost of health care is going up in double-digit percentages each year,” Hendrick says. “It’s killing the employers. The employers have reached a point where many of them have said, ‘I just can’t do this anymore.’ They are pushing more of the cost to the employee.”

Click to view the complete article online or download a complete PDF of the article HERE.

The Nashville Business Journal ran an article Friday about change:healthcare!!

With the book prominently featured, the NBJ says, “Nashville technology start-up change:healthcare has stepped into the national spotlight for its efforts to teach consumers how to shop for health care and decipher the language of  health care providers and insurance companies. The company released “My Healthcare Is Killing Me,” a free e-book for consumers overwhelmed by medical bills or in search of health care choices that benefit them.”

“One of the cornerstones of the consumer-based approach is “transparent” access to pricing from hospitals, doctors, insurance companies and other providers so that individuals can make informed choices about their care.”

Check out the full article by downloading the PDF here.

We’ve got a hero in our midst.

Well, we always knew he was a neat guy and great boss, but now he’s an official, bona fide hero.
The Nashville Business Journal has just named our own Christopher Parks one of a handful of Healthcare Heroes. In a market like Nashville that arguably has been a healthcare Mecca for several decades now, that’s a pretty big deal. CP was tapped in the “Innovator” category — a professional who is breaking new ground in the medical arena through a new advancement or an improvement of efficiencies or a current initiative.

Many of you are well familiar with Christopher’s story… which is intertwined with the change:healthcare story.

In 2006, Christopher lost both parents to cancer. In working through the piles of medical bills, invoices and EOBs that accompanied their care, he found himself unable to make heads or tails of all the paperwork. Despite having worked seventeen years in the healthcare industry, CP learned that sorting through mountains of medical bills and related documents was more than frustrating. It was almost impossible. And not nearly as much fun as a colonoscopy.

After reasoning that the healthcare system shouldn’t be this confusing, nor its paperwork so overwhelming, he united a variety of programmers and created something he called MedBillManager, a web-based tool aimed at helping consumers organize, track and manage their medical bills. Those of you who have been with us since the early days will recall this product, which also helped users compare healthcare costs and quality with peers in secure confidence.

The product put consumers back in the healthcare driver seat just as the new dynamic of consumer-driven healthcare was gaining traction. So joining with fellow entrepreneur Robert Hendrick, who had his own story to tell concerning challenges with the industry, Christopher created change:healthcare and transformed MedBillManager into the “change:healthcare bill management tool.”

With a focus to promote transparency in the healthcare industry by following the dollar for the consumer.

You know the rest. Today, the company provides cost and quality information about providers, prescriptions, health issues and insurances to consumers to help them better understand and navigate the healthcare system. But Christopher has also been lead us toward employers, as well, to help them help employees take control of their healthcare benefits… and make smarter decisions that save everyone time and money.

A little over a year later, more than 15,000 users are sharing vital information concerning more than 2.5 million providers and 10,000 medical services through the change:healthcare platform.

And it all started with a guy who didn’t like the way the healthcare system overwhelmed him. A healthcare hero.

And I knew him when…..

Kudos to the Nashville Business Journal Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief Susan Dentzer for her insightful comments on many issues surrounding healthcare at the recent Nashville Healthcare Council gathering.

The attention grabbing headline of her corresponding article about the potential for healthcare to be the next sub-prime mortgage crisis rings true though I’m not sure it can all be pinned on HSAs as she does in her article.

Compare the two industries and beyond the similarities in dollars paid out, there are some disturbing lessons begging to be learned.

Housing runs in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for a family. Healthcare has the potential to do the exact same.

Mortgages can easily hit $1200 per month in expense. And at $1200-1400/month for family healthcare coverage, average healthcare premium costs alone are comparable to the size of a mortgage note for many families.

And houses have to be maintained. You need a new roof or air conditioning (that’s where I’m living right now). Those are not small expenses running $5K-$10K per instance. Under all too common circumstances, a major illness can generate bills into the tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars beyond premium.

The financial implications of healthcare are clear. They are equal to if not greater than housing expenses for most Americans. But that’s where many of the the similarities end. And this is where it starts to get worrisome. It is potentially far worse than the mortgage crisis.

With housing, you can see it, feel it, touch it. Now ask yourself if you know what tests your doctor ran that last time you saw them.

With housing you decide when to buy. You decide what the right size house is and the best schools. Healthcare is often times unplanned or in a best case scenario, that pregnancy might give you 7-8 months forewarning, but the cancer did not nor did the broken leg (don’t tell me you were planning on breaking your leg unless of course you had a ski trip planned).

In buying a home, you do your research. Find out what other people are paying. Compare features. Ever tried to find out the price of a strep throat test? Pretty basic, but we’ve tried it, and it’s all across the board. For that hip replacement surgery, did your doc ask if you wanted a plastic of a titanium hip, or did he put in what your insurance would cover or simply what he was trained on and what he knows?

With housing you get all sorts of disclosure information about costs. In fact law requires it. Pardon the uncontrolled laughter, but do you have any idea what you are going to be charged walking into your doctor or the ER? There is no pricetag on healthcare for the most part. Cost transparency does NOT exist and what you pay and what someone else pays for the exact same service can vary dramatically.

In buying a home, you budget for it. It’s a big expense. You don’t go outside of your means and say “Damn it all, that’s what I want and by gosh I’m going to get it even if it’s five times what I can afford.” (OK so those days only recently ended in housing). In healthcare, other than premiums, do you have a budget? Are you on a plan with a deductible? Do you have a co-insurance that saddles you with 10 or 20% of the costs incurred? That can be an unbudgeted $500 or even $10 thousand dollars or more.

Which leads to the terms. For a home, you set up terms. You pay out over 30 years or so. Truth in lending requires them to show you how much you will actually pay out in interest, etc. over the 30 years (try to avoid passing out when you see that one by the way). In home-buying, you set up terms that you are (at least theoretically) able to meet with your income. Healthcare is potentially a home-sized expense. And it generally runs its course within 60-90 days. Not a lot of time for an expense that is potentially the size of your home.

So if you default on your home loan, they repossess it. That’s the pledged asset because on debts that size, no one is going to give you the money for the purchase without securing an asset. Healthcare is really different. They can’t make you take back that nasty gall bladder or break your leg again (though the collections tactics they use sometimes border on that). There is no asset pledged against the expense. Hospital wants the money? You don’t have it. their option is to try to force you to liquidate your assets - like your home. The one you lost in the mortgage crisis?

Does healthcare have the potential to be the next sub-prime mortgage crisis?

No, it has far more potential.

Check out the Nashville Business Journal from Friday. Startup surfs transparency wave. Because you cannot read the whole article online… Click here to download the .pdf.

Highlights:

“The company has radically revamped its online Medstimate service, which discloses pricing for services from more than 1.5 million doctors and hospitals and price ranges for more than 10,000 medical services.”

“Customers can use Medstimate to reveal price transparency on everything from major surgery to a month’s supply of medication. For example, a Medstimate search shows price ranges at local hospitals for colon cancer treatment vary greatly, depending on the hospital. At Vanderbilt University Hospital, the range is $49,054 to $53,653. At Saint Thomas Hospital it’s $22,258 to $24,344.”

“Hendrick says he’s not trying to persuade consumers to always go for the least expensive alternative because there can be valid reasons for paying more. But the information derived from a Medstimate inquiry should help someone make a more informed health care decision, he adds.”