Healthshare, one of Australia’s leading digital health platforms, has announced a major partnership with the Australian Health Service Alliance (AHSA), an organisation representing 28 Australian private health funds.
The innovative partnership will help members of AHSA-affiliated funds quickly and easily find a medical specialist who participates in their fund’s No Gap or Known Gap scheme, via Healthshare’s specialist directory.
The directory is available to GPs via their clinical software, enabling upfront discussions with patients about specialists with no out-of-pocket costs at the location of their choice. The GP can then automatically populate a referral through their clinical software including patient and specialist details.
The 2 million members of AHSA affiliated health funds are also empowered to do their own research and find the same information via Healthshare’s consumer website.
The partnership with the AHSA follows Healthshare’s previously announced partnerships with HCF and Medibank.
The company's specialist directory now lists Gap Cover participation information for 27 health funds in Australia, covering over 6 million Australians.
According to Healthshare’s CEO, Rami Weiss, “We are thrilled to partner with the AHSA on this important initiative. Providing transparency around gap cover participation empowers patients, and their GPs, to make better informed health decisions, which is at the core of our company’s objectives.
“Our website www.healthshare.com.au now receives approximately 500,000 unique visitors every month from Australian patients seeking reputable health information. I am proud that Healthshare is the only independent specialist directory that offers specialist gap cover participation information.
“In the first 2 months, we (Healthshare) have helped over 50,000 people find a specialist that participates in a Gap Scheme.”
“Many patients want assistance in managing their out of pocket medical costs," said AHSA CEO, Andrew Sando. "Many funds through AHSA already offer no gap or known gap schemes which are utilised by many doctors and provide some surety to patients on medical costs."
He continued, "We are excited to embark upon this partnership with Healthshare in making available to our member funds and their policyholders and GPs a means to obtain more information about specialists’ use of our member funds’ gap cover arrangements. In accessing this information the anticipation is that policyholders will be empowered to make more informed decisions to derive greater value from their private health cover and reduce their exposure to out-of-pocket medical costs.”