Blog

At DocSpot, our mission is to connect people with the right health care by helping them navigate publicly available information. We believe the first step of that mission is to help connect people with an appropriate medical provider, and we look forward to helping people navigate other aspects of their care as the opportunities arise. We are just at the start of that mission, so we hope you will come back often to see how things are developing.

An underlying philosophy of our work is that right care means different things to different people. We also recognize that doctors are multidimensional people. So, instead of trying to determine which doctors are "better" than others, we offer a variety of filter options that individuals can apply to more quickly discover providers that fit their needs.

Some changes behind the scene

by jerry on November 07, 2020

The past couple of weeks have been very busy for us, as we have worked on some major behind-the-scenes changes. The first major change was with our colocation provider, where we run our servers. Coupled with short notice, we also fit in a different configuration for our servers. Preceding the change in colocation providers, we have also been working on replacing the underlying database. Both changes are done now.

The past couple of weeks have been very busy for us, as we have worked on some major behind-the-scenes changes. The first major change was with our colocation provider, where we run our servers. Coupled with short notice, we also fit in a different configuration for our servers. Preceding the change in colocation providers, we have also been working on replacing the underlying database. Both changes are done now.

There were a few rough edges with the transitions. Ironically, the more successful we were with these changes, the less that people would notice. In the long-term, we hope that both changes will benefit our service. We're particularly hopeful that the database change will help streamline future development.

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Market concentration makes negotiation harder

by jerry on November 01, 2020

Kaiser Health News reported on one elected official's campaign to reduce health expenses for the state. North Carolina's treasurer has been trying to secure a better deal for the insurance that the state pays for its over 700,000 employees and their dependents. Apparently, the hospital association has felt threatened enough by the treasurer's efforts that it lobbied for legislation to prevent reference pricing and has not resorted to contributing to the campaign of the treasurer's challenger.

Kaiser Health News reported on one elected official's campaign to reduce health expenses for the state. North Carolina's treasurer has been trying to secure a better deal for the insurance that the state pays for its over 700,000 employees and their dependents. Apparently, the hospital association has felt threatened enough by the treasurer's efforts that it lobbied for legislation to prevent reference pricing and has not resorted to contributing to the campaign of the treasurer's challenger.

The article suggests that the size of the hospital networks has made it difficult for the treasurer to extract pricing concessions, although the treasurer has resisted further expansions of those chains. When a payer is too reliant on a few large provider networks, the payer has little leverage given how its members may be out of realistic options for providers. In this situation, it is perhaps surprising that the treasurer expected to be able to willingly give up tens of millions of dollars in annual revenue.

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Kaiser Health News reports on possible effects of overturning ACA

by jerry on October 24, 2020

Addressing a claim by the presidential challenger that the incumbent will "slash Medicare benefits," Kaiser Health News published a piece that consulted various health policy experts and reported on their opinions. The current White House administration has supported a challenge to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA); the Supreme Court is schedule to hear oral arguments in November. The presidential challenger's staff has taken that as evidence that the current president will slash Medicare benefits, a potentially helpful charge in this political climate. Independent of the political effectiveness of charge, Kaiser Health News' reporting on what might happen if the ACA is indeed overturned is interesting.

Addressing a claim by the presidential challenger that the incumbent will "slash Medicare benefits," Kaiser Health News published a piece that consulted various health policy experts and reported on their opinions. The current White House administration has supported a challenge to overturn the Affordable Care Act (ACA); the Supreme Court is schedule to hear oral arguments in November. The presidential challenger's staff has taken that as evidence that the current president will slash Medicare benefits, a potentially helpful charge in this political climate. Independent of the political effectiveness of charge, Kaiser Health News' reporting on what might happen if the ACA is indeed overturned is interesting.

For example, the ACA mandated that certain preventive services such as an annual wellness visit would not cost Medicare patients anything. In theory, those benefits could be at risk. There is also a question of whether repealing ACA will cause Medicare to spend more, and whether that would ultimately lead to the slashing of benefits (versus, say, an increase of funding from Congress).

Even after so many years, there seems to still be some doubt regarding the legal viability of the ACA. If the Supreme Court finds the ACA unconstitutional, undoubtedly, the health insurance industry will experience much commotion, at a time that is less than ideal for such confusion.

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California to establish all payer claims database

by jerry on October 16, 2020

Earlier this year, California passed legislation to create an all payer claims database, where health insurers are required to submit claims data to a centralized database for analysis. The initiative is exciting from a health policy perspective; many, but not all, other states already have such a database, and health policy analysts can gain insight into pricing and trending procedures. The legislation appears to have become law at the end of June.

Earlier this year, California passed legislation to create an all payer claims database, where health insurers are required to submit claims data to a centralized database for analysis. The initiative is exciting from a health policy perspective; many, but not all, other states already have such a database, and health policy analysts can gain insight into pricing and trending procedures. The legislation appears to have become law at the end of June.

The rollout is expected to take three years, and the current plan is for only highlights or summaries of the data to become publicly available. Additionally, the legislation only funds the start of the initiative, expecting that the agency around this database will find its own funding for ongoing maintenance costs. Nevertheless, this initiative is a step in providing better insight into healthcare expenditures that might eventually lead to better health policies.

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New profile summary pages

by jerry on October 10, 2020

Another user-facing feature that we have been working on recently has been profile summary pages, which show highlights from various tabs on all one page. Currently, highlights include aggregate statistics about Medicare patient panel demographics (e.g. the number of Medicare patients served in a year, and popular conditions among those patients), procedures performed for Medicare patients, and payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies (Open Payments).

Another user-facing feature that we have been working on recently has been profile summary pages, which show highlights from various tabs on all one page. Currently, highlights include aggregate statistics about Medicare patient panel demographics (e.g. the number of Medicare patients served in a year, and popular conditions among those patients), procedures performed for Medicare patients, and payments from pharmaceutical and medical device companies (Open Payments).

We spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out how to present the information and would certainly welcome feedback. An extension of this project is harnessing some of this work to improve the general profiles.

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