In an ambitious new system developed by a health care technology company, the way patients pay for medical services would significantly change.
Healthation, a company based in Darien, Illinois, created innovative software for health care administration and a new process of instantly sharing patient information between providers, insurance companies, and employers.
The administration software is called AcceleHealth and the new information sharing system is known as the Information Currency Exchange.
It all starts when a patient receives care at a health care provider — for example a routine check-up at the doctor’s office. Through Healthation’s technology, the patient can pay for the service right then.
Like transactions on an ATM, the patient can see the details of the payment electronically.
“The exchange works much like a stock exchange in that it will employ a common technology platform to process health care transactions and route information, ” wrote the Chicago Sun-Times.
In the Information Currency Exchange, patients will be assigned health care scores — similar to how credit scores determine a person’s interest rate. From there, patients can be penalized or rewarded for good health care behavior.
That means it will be in the patient’s hands to choose their health care service. Under this system, they will have to choose the most cost-effective and efficient medical services, or their health care score could suffer.
“So if a consumer usually chooses a ‘Mercedes’ prescription when a cheaper generic version is available, he or she will pay more out of pocket, ” wrote the Sun-Times article.
But very few firms use Healthation’s technology, and this kind of drastic system overhaul may take up to 10 years to implement.
Still, it may be the model for a future health care system in the U.S.
“It’s a model much like any other retail marketplace. Today, shoppers know who the retailer is and how it performs, and they pay for their purchase at the counter, ” said Healthation’s CEO Scott Kornhauser.