附近上门

Health tech company aims to highlight individual doctor performance so that its corporate clients’ employees can receive better health care experiences no matter which doctor they choose.

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鈥淲e looked at patient data and found that patients in the same geography, ones you would think would have the same outcome, ended up with different health and cost outcomes,鈥� , Garner Health founder and CEO, told 附近上门 News. 鈥淥ne would go to the doctor and be okay, another one, not so much. The biggest determinant, and the driver of costs and outcomes, is which doctor the person saw.鈥�

That patient data led the New York-based company to develop a platform that analyzes large amounts of medical insurance claims to identify the highest-quality doctors in a city or neighborhood. Partnering with employers, Garner guides employees to the best doctors, and if they use Garner to choose their doctor, the employer agrees to pay the employees鈥� out-of-pocket costs. The employers end up saving thousands on medical bills, an estimated 10 percent in overall health benefit costs, Reber said.

To aid in the company鈥檚 growth, it raised $12.5 million in Series A funding led by , with support from and . In total, the company has raised $17 million, which includes a $4.5 million seed round in 2020, led by Thrive, according to 附近上门 data.

, partner at Founders Fund, said in an interview that he used to work with Reber at , and while knowing him was a factor in the decision to invest in the company, one of the missions of Founders Fund is to cut the cost of health care.

鈥淭his is a space we have known and cared about for quite some time,鈥� Singerman said. 鈥淎 company giving people financial incentive to see better doctors and a great founder working on something like this is a no-brainer. It is hard to get outcomes data and to give people proper data, and Garner is doing that.鈥�

Meanwhile, Garner鈥檚 platform currently serves more than 10,000 members in more than 30 states. Reber intends to use the new funding to build out Garner鈥檚 sales and engineering teams, as well as improve its data. And while much of its growth comes from word-of-mouth referrals, he would like to see that shift to include partnerships with health care brokers and health plans.

Although there are other platforms, such as , or , for searches, competitors aren鈥檛 able to provide the same kind of unbiased and transparent doctor rankings Garner Health can because the company has no financial relationship with health care providers, Reber said. Instead, recommendations are based on cost and quality analytics derived from hard data.

鈥淭ransparency tools help you understand what an MRI costs, but no one uses that because everyone trusts their doctor about where to go, rather than looking on the app,鈥� he said.

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