Healthcare price-transparency platform Turquoise Health has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The spherical was led by Andreessen Horowitz with participation from Bessemer, Box Group and Tiger Global.
WHAT IT DOES
Turquoise provides a platform the place sufferers can search providers and suppliers for price info, evaluate money costs and enter insurance coverage info to search out out-of-pocket prices. The firm receives its information from machine-readable recordsdata posted by hospitals to remain in compliance with CMS’ Hospital Price Transparency Rulewhich went into impact in January 2021.
The firm additionally gives compliance instruments for hospitals, service bundling software program, market charge information, a pricing API for different firms to make use of of their apps, and a Medicare pricing engine.
Alongside the Series A, Turquoise introduced a brand new product, dubbed Clear Contracts. Its purpose is to simplify the direct-contracting course of between suppliers and payers. The platform makes use of the corporate’s pricing information and boilerplate contracts, so events can extra shortly commute on acceptable charges.
“We’re committed to a vision of the new pre-revenue cycle where patients and payers know the costs upfront and providers become accustomed to real-time payment for shoppable services,” cofounder and CEO Chris Severn mentioned in a press release.
“By creating a clean, easy-to-use direct contracting platform, Turquoise Health is shifting the industry’s focus towards complete financial certainty prior to care ultimately resulting in less friction between patients, providers and payers.”
MARKET SNAPSHOT
Many hospitals nonetheless aren’t in full compliance with the federal price transparency guidelines. According to a February survey from patientrightsadvocate.orgsolely 14.3% of 1,000 hospitals had been absolutely following the principles.
About 38% of the hospitals included within the survey posted sufficient negotiated charges, however greater than half weren’t compliant in different facets of the rule, like charges by every insurer and named plan. Those outcomes had been in step with earlier studies discovering many hospitals weren’t absolutely compliant.
Other tech-enabled firms that intention to extend price transparency in healthcare embrace CashMD, which launched its price device in 2019, and ‘self-pay’ insurtech Sidecar Health, which raised $125 million in Series C funding in January 2021.
