MediBid is correcting the healthcare market with its auction platform

Many economists consider an auction to be the purest form of the real economy at work, and MediBid is proving it with its auction platform. MediBid stands in stark contrast to the traditional means of locating providers and patients. With its auction format, MediBid makes the provider-patient relationship a win-win, with providers optimizing their capacity, profit and flexibility, and patients getting the best combination of price and quality.

MediBid’s Healthcare auction platform is the future of healthcare

Medical bidding isn’t theory or a lightly proven hypothesis. Major governmental entities, including Medicare, are considering it for cost reduction purposes.

The auction process is what drives MediBid’s competitive market, and it operates in a way that everyone involved understands intuitively. Here’s a quick look at how an auction takes place on MediBid:

1. Patients and providers create a MediBid account – Creating an account on MediBid is simple. After MediBid verifies the provider’s information, the account can be used immediately for bidding or creating a request for care.
2. Patients, termed seekers, submit a request for care – Once a patient requests care, they are considered seekers. Seekers provide comprehensive information about their request, including the specific treatment needed, the patient’s medical history, and answers to the questions that providers are most likely to ask. Seekers may also provide images or documents for review.
3. Providers bid on these requests – Once submitted, requests can be bid on by any provider, regardless of where they are located. Every provider has an opportunity to compete on price and quality in this format, as seekers are given transparent information on both.
4. Seekers select a winning bid – When a patient selects a bid, the relevant provider is given a bid win report that includes the patient’s contact information.
5. Patients and providers communicate directly with each other – As soon as the winning bid is selected, both the provider and patient are encouraged to contact each other to confirm all details. At this point, the provider and patient know what services are to be rendered, whether a facility will be involved, if travel will be necessary, how much the treatment will cost, and the provider’s outcome history regarding the procedure. In effect, everyone is on the same page before services are rendered, so there is no surprise at the end.

It’s a simple format that is familiar to anyone who has used an auction website before. MediBid is leveraging what people already know (how to shop online) to help people better optimize their healthcare decisions.

How MediBid’s healthcare auction works for providers and patients

An auction marketplace provides much more than usability, correcting the healthcare market’s inefficiencies and inconveniences, which offer advantages to both the patient and the provider in the following ways:

1. Optimizing capacity – Practitioners and facilities may not think of their business in terms of capacity, but they should. Underutilization is a widespread problem in the medical field, and one that’s mostly fueled by taking control out of the provider’s hands.For example, a lot of practices and facilities see a drop in patient traffic during the early months of the year. There are several reasons for this, but the most impactful one is that people have yet to pay their deductibles. A problem made worse by the increased popularity of high deductible plans.During these slow months, a practice should be able to compensate by changing their prices or expanding their reach. Both are impossible in a traditional contracting, or direct contracting model, as the provider is locked into a set of reimbursement rates, which makes it difficult to differentiate their practice from others.MediBid gives this freedom back to the provider, so they can do everything possible to optimize capacity and equipment usage throughout the year. If patient traffic drops at the beginning of the year, providers can drop their price or bid on additional requests to get that traffic back up. With MediBid, providers can stabilize their patient census and avoid the ups and downs that come with the U.S. healthcare market.
2. Providing a competitive advantage – If providers are given control of their practice or facility back, they always have a competitive advantage over those that don’t. Why? Because MediBid’s providers can rapidly respond to the market as it changes. When patient volumes drop at the beginning of the year, MediBid’s providers are able to lower their prices. When patient volumes surge, MediBid’s providers can raise their prices to respond to demand. MediBid’s providers can also adapt to the market should insurance companies adjust their prices and discounts.
3. Keeping prices transparent and low – The nature of every auction is that the price is always known. That’s the case with MediBid, where providers offer a single bundled case rate for everything, including anesthesia. Seekers don’t have to put in any work to get several competitive bids for their treatment. They only have to wait for them to arrive and make the right choice on price and quality.Because price and quality are both known at all times, providers are incentivized to compete on price, which is always a good thing for the consumer. MediBid is bringing competition back to the market, and the result is more competitive pricing.
4. Restoring the freedom to choose – In the traditional model patients face stiff penalties for going out of network and may have trouble locating a practitioner that will take their insurance. The search for a physician or facility has become a frustrating part of the process for patients and is only an issue because they can’t choose who to see.MediBid dispenses with network restrictions and limitations. Instead, seekers can see whoever they want, as long as the price and quality are right. Seekers can even travel, domestically or internationally, to reduce the price further.

There’s no downside to MediBid’s healthcare auction marketplace. Providers come out ahead because they are able to operate their practice like a true business in the real economy. Patients come out ahead because this leads to lower prices, better quality, and more freedom.

There’s no loser here because MediBid operates the way the market should, and the way most other markets do. This is a simple, yet powerful change that has some referring to MediBid as a disruptive innovation to health care. It’s an innovation that providers and patients have been waiting for.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]