Telemedicine is fuelling demand for digit-first healthcare delivery and consumer-directed healthcare payment models, both within and outside of established healthcare billing and payment limits, by blazing new trails in how patients receive care and payments flow.
In a discussion for the “Visa B2B Series: What CFOs and Treasurers Can Teach Payments About Going Digital,” David Goldhill, founder and CEO of Sesame, and Mansoor Khan, CEO of OneClinic and parent AMK Technologies, emphasized the inefficiencies of healthcare reimbursements and workarounds.
Sesame is a pure telehealth solution, whereas OneClinic is based on physical facilities with on-site telehealth capabilities that physicians may use – however, both are plagued by outdated insurance billing methods.
Goldhill added that more doctors and providers “have clients who pay directly for services,” noting that patients, whether insured or uninsured, are being forced to incur increased out-of-pocket costs for their care. Nonetheless, they face the same administrative and financial challenges as the insurance system does.”
For example, Sesame functions similarly to “a conventional online marketplace, but for healthcare services that are paid for directly by the patient and charged directly by the doctor,” he stated. “Unlike the insurance industry, doctors may compete on cost, care packages, and service definitions.”
“We continuously criticize innovation for not always working for all 325 million people,” Goldhill remarked. This is one of the reasons we have so little consumer-directed innovation in healthcare. The reality is that video medicine provides hitherto unavailable access to a wide range of ailments for a large range of people.”
