Medical Marketplace

A new Web site lets Minnesota consumers shop for individual services and post reviews of their experiences.

Mary Tyler Moore, move aside. Carol has come to Minneapolis, and for anyone tracking developments in healthcare consumerism, she might become the most popular girl in town. Carol is the name of a new online medical marketplace in the Twin Cities that allows consumers to shop for medical and dental services, compare options, and book appointments.

Like the savvy shopper everybody seeks out for advice, Carol hangs out at www.carol.com, providing details—for example, the difference between the $450 tooth-whitening offered by one dentist and the $219 package offered by another—along with information about price and quality ratings. The site also allows consumers to read—and write—reviews about their experiences with physicians and clinics.

The marketplace went live in January with about 40 providers ranging from solo practitioners to Minute Clinic to Park Nicollet Clinic, one of the largest multispecialty clinics in the nation with more than 700 physicians and 25 locations. In less than a month, 30 other providers lined up to join. Like tenants at a mall, providers pay varying rates for posting services, depending on the space and amenities they buy.

"Now that they can see it, touch it, and understand the power of a direct consumer channel, the response has been amazing," says Tomás Valdivia, MD, the company's president. In addition to adding providers and services in the Minneapolis market, Carol—the name of the company as well as the marketplace it operates—intends to expand into two more cities this year, although Valdivia declined to name them.

Valdivia and his partner, CEO Tony Miller, hail from the insurance industry. Miller was the CEO for Definity Health, the consumer-driven health plan that UnitedHealthGroup bought in 2004; Valdivia was chief medical officer for Definity and medical director of informatics at Ingenix, also now owned by United.

But their allegiance is not to the health insurance industry, but to a transformation in the way healthcare providers compete on value.

"Providers do not want to compete on price, and we want to support them by telling their full value story," Miller says. "On the other side of that equation, consumers do not want to shop on price. They want to shop on value."

Some consumerism advocates believe everybody wants the provider that offers the lowest cost with the highest quality rating, but Miller and Valdivia say that fails to acknowledge that the concept of "value" differs from one consumer to the next.

"A consistent theme throughout the history of healthcare is that we can standardize what healthcare should be for everyone, and I think that is a mistake," Miller says.

HealthPartners, a large integrated health system in Minneapolis, posted 45 services—bundled as "care packages"—when the "care marketplace" went live. The system plans to add at least 40 more in the next year.

"We're excited about Carol, because we think that packaging bundles of care for consumers is important in terms of transforming the healthcare system," says Lora Hedin, HealthPartners' senior director of product and market solutions. "We're excited about creating a true market for consumers."

HealthPartners Clinics, a network of more than 20 dental and medical clinics, initially posted services that are already bundled—for example, a physical exam for child, age 1-4, and a combo dental and medical exam for a male, age 18-39.

Now the company is creating new packages that reflect the way many other services are actually provided. For example, Hedin says, a maternity package might include prenatal care, delivery, postnatal care and some additional phone services that new parents would appreciate.

Or a package of physical therapy services could include assessment, treatment sessions and pharmacy services.

While Hedin believes Carol will bring new patients to HealthPartners' clinics, she also believes it will help people insured by HealthPartners health plan to make better decisions, ultimately reducing the overall costs of care.

—Lola Butcher