SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 17, 2017 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Amino, a healthcare transparency company, today announced new features for Amino Plus, its offering for employers and employees seeking a better way to find quality, affordable care. Amino Plus will now offer new layers of meaningful information about cost, quality, and relevant benefits, seamlessly blended into a search experience that surfaces the best recommendations for one’s network, needs, and personal preferences.
This announcement comes as Amino remains committed to helping consumers make smarter decisions in a time when rising healthcare costs and anxieties are leaving Americans in search of more (and better) options to stay healthy, while not breaking the bank.
“As costs of care rise, employers and consumers are the two groups disproportionately bearing the burden, while also lacking the data points others in the industry take for granted. That’s why we at Amino are focused on giving these groups the information and tools they need to navigate decisions that could save them thousands of dollars. Our continued work to hone in on where to find the best possible care –– carefully weighing cost, safety, experience, and individual needs –– means we can begin to bolster Americans’ ability to become true consumers of healthcare,” said David Vivero, CEO of Amino.
Amino Plus launched in April of this year to extend the Amino.com experience to support America’s largest category of healthcare payers: employees and employers. In contrast to first-generation transparency solutions and insurance portals, Amino meets people where they are already searching for care –– Amino’s content and recommendations rank in thousands of Google health-related topics and can be found on dozens of leading industry and consumer websites through its partnerships. Amino Plus also provides concierge appointment booking and real-time deductible and out-of-pocket maximum tracking. Unlike other transparency solutions, all these features require little implementation, especially since Amino brings its own database of 1.8 billion insurance claims to the table.
With today’s announcement, Amino Plus adds:
New cost and quality insights
- Facility Cost Ratings for thousands of hospitals, imaging centers, and urgent care across the country: Amino has created a new and simple way to gauge the relative cost of care at facilities, based on patterns in healthcare pricing identifiable in insurance claims data. Amino’s Facility Cost Ratings leverage recognizable dollar signs to allow people to more easily shop for procedures like MRIs and surgeries nearby, knowing which facilities are in-network and relatively affordable. These new ratings will join Amino’s cost estimates to offer people multiple layers of information to help them choose the most affordable care possible.
- C-section and sepsis rates for relevant care searches: Amino will soon be adding new C-section rates and sepsis rates to thousands of facility profiles, based on AHRQ standards applied to Amino’s database. These rates are well-established measures to assess hospital quality, and will join existing safety and outcome-related information, including Leapfrog Hospital Safety Grades and physician-level outcomes measures, in the product.
A smarter and simpler way to find the best care
- Smart Match: Amino is updating its data-driven healthcare search to help people quickly identify safe and affordable care nearby. In Amino Plus, the search algorithm now factors in four main filters that assess cost and quality:
- In-network coverage
- New Facility Cost Ratings
- Physician experience with a particular condition
- Hospital safety
- Amino automatically surfaces providers that rank highest in these categories, which it designates a “Smart Match.”
More connectivity with benefits, platforms, and partners
- Contextual Benefits: Employees have access to many types of benefits today, including offerings that connect them to alternative and/or cost-saving forms of care –– yet might not remember them in the moment. This new feature allows employers to show these benefits, such as telemedicine, directly in the search results for a relevant condition or procedure.
- Single Sign-On (SSO): Amino now supports single sign-on capabilities through Okta and OneLogin, with more coming soon.
- Partnerships: Amino is working with a number of organizations and companies to expand the reach of its transparency offerings. Among Amino’s new partnerships:
- Amino was recently added to the Fidelity Health Marketplace, which provides benefits guidance to small and midsize businesses and their employees.
- Amino has partnered with EaseCentral to embed transparency solutions in their benefits administration platform, which serves thousands of brokers.
For more information about Amino, Amino Plus, and the company’s cost and quality offerings, visit partners.amino.com.
About Amino:
Amino is a healthcare transparency company that connects everyone to better, more affordable care. Amino has compiled an unprecedented database on doctors, facilities, and $1.8 trillion in medical bills, which it uses to personalize care recommendations on Amino.com and through its trusted partner network. Additionally, employers partner with Amino to guide employees to in-network, quality care while helping them manage their out-of-pocket costs. The company is based in San Francisco and is backed by Accel, CRV, Highland Capital Management, Rock Health, and notable individual investors.
Contact:
Press@amino.com