ZendyHealth in the PCMag Start-Up Spotlight
Patients traditionally don't become much of a say in what they pay for medical procedures. Insurance providers and medical practices set the market place. Doctors give you a toll, and your insurance either leaves you with the co-pay or takes a clamper out of your deductible.
ZendyHealth, the company in this PCMag Start-Up Spotlight, is flipping the paradigm. The start-up is turning the process of booking a medical, dental, or corrective procedure into a Priceline-like marketplace for healthcare through which consumers working with loftier-deductible insurance plans or paying for procedures out-of-pocket can set their own price and submit bids, on anything from an MRI or CT browse to a dental cleaning or a facelift.
"Patients oftentimes struggle to pay their bills and negotiate fees despite having health insurance and, due to a lack of price transparency and higher out-of-pocket costs, they don't know what they'll exist paying. Nosotros're empowering the patient to take control of their healthcare expenses," said Dr. Vish Banthia, co-founder, CEO, and Principal Medical Officer (CMO) at ZendyHealth. "The name-your-own-price model lets you select a procedure when and where y'all desire, at a price you can afford. And we leverage the backlog capacity that even the best providers have to address the mounting overhead costs of empty appointments, which could amount to saving thousands of dollars for a exercise."
Why It Works for Businesses
The benefit for consumers is clear. The website gives users self-service control over choice and price, making healthcare appointment booking experience like shopping for a flight or hotel room. But ZendyHealth wouldn't piece of work without intrinsic value for the providers list their services.
Dr. Banthia, a double Board Certified surgeon who had his own practice for more than ten years, explained the value proposition for businesses. Once verified in ZendyHealth's (complimentary) Provider Network, businesses cull which bids to accept and fill out last-minute openings on their schedules. From there, the practices become greenbacks upfront directly through the website, avoiding insurance companies, late payments, and other problems around signal-of-service (PoS) collections—the healthcare industry'south PoS payment collection strategy to bargain with changes in insurance reimbursements brought about past the Affordable Care Act.
"Information technology'southward not just nigh filling last-minute cancellations; for these businesses, it's nearly filling that excess chapters with greenbacks-paying patients," said Dr. Banthia. "That upfront cash improves the point-of-service collections, which are an issue for many, many providers now given the changes in the healthcare system around higher deductibles."
Company Dossier
Name: ZendyHealth
Founded: 2014
Founders: Dr. Vish Banthia, Kimi Verma
Executive Team: Dr. Banthia-CEO and Chief Medical Officeholder; Roumen Antonov, PhD-CTO
HQ: Los Angeles, CA
What They Do: Priceline-like market for healthcare
What That Means: Consumers name their ain price for medical, dental, and cosmetic procedures
Business Model: Freemium Software-as-a-Service (SaaS)
Current Status: Responsive desktop/mobile website is alive
Current Funding: $250K self-financed seed funding; $1 million affections round
Expected Mobile App Launch: Android and iOS apps coming leap 2022
Next Steps: Expand providers and procedure list; Series A funding
Within the Platform
ZendyHealth grew out of problems Dr. Banthia observed and experienced, both on the patient and provider side, while running his practice. He piloted the idea of bidding on open up appointment slots in his own offices before founding the start-up and launching the website. The company began as ZendyBeauty, focusing on cosmetic procedures, and announced its rebranding to ZendyHealth in April 2022 with the expansion to medical and dental procedures.
On the patient side, ZendyHealth's desktop and responsive mobile website gives you a polish user experience (UX). From the home page, you can starting time immediately past selecting a procedure from the drop-down menu and inbound your ZIP code in the Pick Your Price tool, or click to view all the bachelor procedures in the ZendyHealth Market place (cleaved down into Health, Dental, and Beauty categories). Doctors, hospitals, and patients are also helping dictate what procedures are added to the marketplace, which is steadily growing. The other way to browse is through provider listings, a directory of doctor and practice profiles searchable by ZIP code, category, or specific procedure.
Once you choose a procedure in your area, the Pick Your Price tool populates a class depending on the procedure you've chosen. For an MRI, for example, users enter medical information such as the type of scan and which trunk part information technology's for, choose a preferred appointment date and flexibility, and and then make an offer on the process. ZendyHealth includes a sliding scale in the tool to bear witness you what the average price is for the procedure. After typing in a bid, it gives you a low, medium, or high chance of acceptance. After submitting a bid, you get a confirmation email and, from there, the provider contacts you directly to schedule an accustomed date.
On the business organization side, the first affair a medical, dental, or cosmetic practice needs to practice is register as a Certified Provider. There'south no sign-up or membership fee, merely ZendyHealth does put each prospective member through a verification process earlier listing them on the Provider Network.
"Dissimilar platforms where you can pay a subscription fee model and get listed equally a doc, nosotros're verifying credentials to screen and decide whether we'll accept a provider into the network," said Dr. Banthia. "Nosotros expect at a combination of licensure, whether they have hospital privileges, and we look at commercial and industry review platforms to come with an average score to ensure high-quality member providers."
From the provider portal, users come across all of the process bids in their notification centers and can manage and schedule appointments from at that place. In that location are no integration options or application programming interfaces (APIs) to hook ZendyHealth into providers' back-cease scheduling or healthcare customer human relationship management (CRM) systems, but it's something the start-up is exploring.
ZendyHealth's characteristic development is focused largely around making the UX more intuitive. Developers are tweaking the platform to suit the way patients adopt to browse and book, and to give providers more than control over their offerings. In the feature pipeline is what Dr. Banthia described equally "user flows for patients who are uncomfortable with the process of behest" and a feature for providers who don't wish to disbelieve their prices. Though, he said ZendyHealth is witting of not spreading its early on-stage offset-up resources too sparse on feature development.
"We're trying to create a platform that's seamless," said Dr. Banthia. "You don't need webinars or tutorials or downloadable software to integrate. It's intuitive and easy to use. Providers are decorated; they don't have time to go through hours of tutorials for an added service that'south outside their domain expertise."
ZendyHealth's mobile app for Android and iOS is in the works equally well. The app is planned for launch inside the next two months, and volition include both patient and provider-facing experiences.
Business organisation Plan Breakup
Dr. Banthia put up his own coin for ZendyHealth's initial launch, and the kickoff-up has since raised an affections investment seed round of $i million at a $5 meg valuation comprising private investors and medical professionals. From there, ZendyHealth was accepted into the 500 Startups accelerator and into StartX Med, a medical-focused start-up accelerator program run out of Stanford University. The visitor volition shortly be seeking a Series A funding round, potentially from the accelerators, as well every bit traditional venture capital letter (VC) firms.
ZendyHealth has expanded to list providers in most major cities and metro areas across the U.s., but Dr. Banthia said the growth in provider listings has come up about organically. The beginning-upwardly still has only a scattering of employees—the executives and a squad of developers—and has devoted most of its marketing and acquisition efforts toward consumer visibility through advertising and partnerships, with a new wave of partnerships on the horizon with infirmary groups to raise customer growth and sensation.
In terms of monetization strategies, ZendyHealth is notwithstanding figuring it out. The outset-up is operating under a freemium model where at that place will never be any cost on the consumer side, just they're beginning to enquiry and implement more than premium features on the business side. In some geographic areas the platform is tracking "take charge per unit," which is the amount taken from the value of a bid. Dr. Banthia said the start-up is fifty-fifty playing with the idea of a premium offer for certified providers to pay for exclusive geographic territory in accepting bids on particular procedures.
"There are opportunities for a lot of unlike revenue streams, because nosotros know nosotros offer a lot of value for providers. They're generating a lot of extra business organisation from patients they never would've otherwise gotten," said Dr. Banthia.
From a marketplace perspective, ZendyHealth provides a unique platform. There are other digital healthcare marketplaces out at that place such equally Healthcare Bluebook and OpsCost that list prices for different procedures and compare hospitals and practices, simply none are tackling the business opportunity from both the patient and the provider side.
What ZendyHealth needs to do now is focus. Patients and providers are already flocking to the platform, the website's reach is expanding organically, the key mobile app element is shut to fruition, and the UX is hassle-costless for both sides. Beyond its Series A funding round, this start-up needs to lay out a set monetization strategy with multiple acquirement streams and a plan to continue non only customer base growth, just to transform that into tangible business value.
Ask the Experts: Start-Up Advice
Daniel Dehrey, Principal at Collaborative Fund said ZendyHealth is hitting on ii ascendant trends in healthcare on the consumer side: on-need and increased patient control over their procedures. On the business side, he said in that location's an opportunity to provide increased exposure for some of the smaller medical providers on the platform.
"Equally the supply side grows, a number of revenue opportunities tin can open up upwardly," said Dehrey. "I would focus early curating and ensuring quality on the supply side and making certain the company nails the feel for its early users on the demand side. If they've got it right, [users] should wish that booking everything was every bit like shooting fish in a barrel equally using ZendyHealth."
Jamie Davidson, Partner at Redpoint Venturespointed to cost transparency as ZendyHealth'due south about valuable asset merely said the company's go-to-market strategy is still vague, especially concerning repeat use cases for everyday patients.
"Always since the Affordable Care Act was enacted, there has been an increased focus from the The states authorities and Medicare and Medicaid on cost controls and understanding the efficacy of medical services," said Davidson. "[ZendyHealth] is addressing a real consumer pain bespeak, but can information technology create an experience that generates more revenue to the providers through incremental visits or 'sales' while saving money for the consumer? The all-time consumer products end up looking like utilities in the long run."
Know a cool first-up we should spotlight next? Are you a VC business firm interested in weighing in on featured start-ups? Electronic mail your suggestions to robert_marvin@pcmag.com.
Nigh Rob Marvin
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/feature/11061/zendyhealth-in-the-pcmag-start-up-spotlight
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