Opening the Marketplace: The Next Steps for Healthcare

Buying fruit is far simpler than choosing a doctor.
But as a patient, you still need to be an educated shopper.

Whether or not you believe in the new Health Insurance Exchange, it's hard to argue against the economic principle behind it: an open marketplace encourages competition, better products, and lower prices. The problem is that the the exchanges don't go far enough. The issue is not about how much you pay, but about how much others pay for the same service.

Most insurance plans only partially cover the price of a medical procedure and often, doctors will require patients to pay whatever their insurance doesn't cover. These extra costs can vary widely, and together with copayments and deductibles, leave many patients with medical bills they can't afford. We don't want to be cheap when it comes to our health, and asking for prices upfront somehow seems a little uncomfortable.

So how do we solve this problem? Obviously, there's no panacea. But here are two concepts that I think need to be part of the solution:

Reviews: Patients need to rely on more than just referrals to decide on their doctors. They need honest recommendations and facts. The website ZocDoc.com already provides physician reviews and allows patients to book appointments online; but to be effective, reviews need to be more widespread. There are privacy concerns for sure. Many patients don't want to talk about their medical struggles online. Still, to make healthcare more affordable, patients must be able to evaluate the quality of the doctors available.

Price Lists: Patients need to know the prices of procedures. Obviously, cost is not the only factor in deciding which doctor to see. But it is a factor and needs to be addressed. There are ways for people who can look up insurance and have a lot of time to research prices, but that is not practical for most patients. There are also websites that provide average rates for procedures by area, including Healthcare Blue Book and FAIR Health. But they don't tell you which doctor in your area has the best price. Customers need to be able to comparison shop and evaluate the quality of the available products to make educated decisions.

These are just a couple of ideas, and I would love to hear what you think. Feel free to comment below or on social media.

The Key Ingredients for a Great Corporate Bio

When you meet someone at a party, the first words you say are usually your name. And if you want to keep the conversation going, you talk a little about yourself: where you’re from, how you know the host(s), or what you do for a living. Should the process be any different when you visit a startup’s website?

To some degree, yes. After all, people visit a company’s website to find out more about its products or services, not its name. That process, though, should only take a few seconds. Immediately after, people will want to know who’s running the show.

There are many articles online about how to write a corporate bio, so I won’t bore you with them. I will just say that bios should be:

• Short and achievement-based: Ideally a paragraph or two, and highlight specific achievements in your career that relate to your new company. For instance, if you’re creating a new social media site for donut shops, then you will want to talk about your visits to donut shops across the country, your popular blog about donuts, and your experience in small business and social media.

• Relevant to your company: You don’t want to mention random information: that you love Star Trek, enjoy waterskiing, and have a wife, two daughters, and a dog (that is unless you are creating a social media site for families that eat donuts, in which case you’d want to talk about your family’s passion for donuts early in the bio). If you want everyone to know about your life outside of donuts – just include links to your social media profiles.

• Feature a Current Photo: This is very important. You want people to know what you look like. It makes them feel connected to you and your company.

Want to learn more? Stay tuned for a future post where I will share some examples of outstanding donuts corporate bios. By the way, I like Boston Cream and Jelly without the powdered sugar.

When is a Crowd Too Big to Handle?

There are two aspects of crowdsourcing websites that are very appealing. To individuals, these sites provide the chance to share ideas and see the results, something we often don't get to experience in a world that's often unfair. For entrepreneurs, the crowds offer the opportunity to hire fewer employees, and create a customer base that feels a sense of ownership and personal pride in the company.  But is crowdsourcing always the right approach?

It shouldn't take a crowd to figure that out. Virtual crowds are great for market research and spreading the word about a new product or service, especially among the younger generation. But when they get too large, they are not always effective. Big teams can take longer to make decisions, whether they are made unanimously or by majority. And sometimes because of the size, the ideas of some of the smartest teammates are drowned out by the crowd, leading to bad results. The question of how the optimal team size has been studied by experts for quite some time, and of course, there are different opinions (check out this article from Knowledge@Wharton). But it's a question that we must continue to ask, as the crowdsourcing industry gets more crowded every day.