Business Opportunities Weblog

July 30, 2008 by Rich Whittle | 2 Comments

Associated Press:

After three surgeries, Judy Sherer still had chronic pain in her left shoulder. She’d lost faith in her doctors, and in despair tried a new health benefit offered by her employer.

The service, Health Advocate, is a call-in center that helps customers find the right doctor, haggle over insurance coverage and manage other medical system headaches.

An advocate helped Sherer find a new surgeon — one who found metal shavings left in her shoulder by a previous doctor. The advocate also negotiated the charge for her physical therapy down to $40 per visit from the $200 she was told initially.

Health Advocate is one of a growing number of U.S. companies offering some form of advocacy services to medical consumers. Revolution Health — the Web-based medical consumer services company overseen by AOL co-founder Steve Case — has been considering getting into the same business.

“It’s a really interesting industry that’s just taking off,” said Carol Fischer, a spokeswoman for Pennsylvania-based Health Advocate, a 12 million-member organization.

Currently, the health advocacy business is an industry with about $50 million to $75 million in annual revenue but only about a dozen companies of any significant size, said Richard Rakowski of Intersection LLC, a Connecticut-based investment and development firm that has researched the field.

But those numbers have grown from a few years ago, and it may be on track to become a $1 billion industry based on the demand for the service, said Rakowski, the firm’s principal.

The field is blossoming in the wake of cutbacks in corporate health benefits, an overhaul of Medicare and other changes that have forced medical consumers to shop more for medical care.

More than ever, people need help negotiating the medical system, said Jessica Greene, a University of Oregon health policy analyst.

Photo by lusi.

In Costs, Customer Service, Healthcare | 2 Comments