Trying to compete with CVS’ new HealthHUBS? A portal won’t cut it
- lindalongcommunica
- Nov 19, 2021
- 5 min read
It’s hard being a hospital or health plan executive these days. Competition hits you from all sides and market share dwindles by the day. And now, CVS is putting even more arrows in its quiver with HealthHUBS that will compete with you in less than a year. These specialty clinics are planned to hit Boston, Dallas-Fort Worth, Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia in the first half of 2020(1)
Why should this worry you? HealthHUBS aren’t your typical doc-in-a-box. CNBC reports that CVS’ HealthHUBS will treat chronic disease patients, such as diabetics, instead of just colds and flu. CVS President Kevin Hourican says: “’We can address the chronic disease patients of Aetna, lower medical costs and serve customers better than they’re currently being served.’” (2) This new approach will change the way hundreds of thousands, even millions, of consumers access healthcare. And many of those millions could be your patients. In other words, you could lose market share and a lot of it.
The fact that hospital executives are finally realizing that consumerism drives healthcare consumption is a start to fighting back. Becker’s Hospital Review reports that 69 percent of hospital executives say improving consumer experience is a top priority for 2019, according to a survey conducted by Sage Growth Partners.(3)
So that’s great news.
But the bad news? Hospital executives, while realizing they need to do a better job in reaching
consumers, are choosing the wrong solutions to do so.
According to Becker’s: “When asked which technologies their hospitals have implemented to improve consumer experience, survey participants said:
•Phone calls: 93 percent.
•EHRs: 90 percent.
•Patient portals: 83 percent.” (4)
What??? EHRs and patient portals? Are you kidding? Don’t hospital execs realize by now that EHRs have interoperability and usability issues and have even been linked to causing patient harm? And portals? People do not like portals and they don’t use them.
Two-thirds of people do not use portals. In case you missed the bold print, let’s repeat: “In a nationally representative survey, researchers found that nearly two-thirds of insured participants had not used an online medical portal in the past year,” according to Reuters.(5)
It’s great that you want to reach your consumers. But EHRs and portals aren’t the way. To be effective in reaching consumers, you need a technology solution that makes healthcare easy for the patient at every single step. From shopping quality and cost, to accessing the provider, whether it’s through an Uber ride to an office visit or a telehealth session on the smartphone, healthcare access needs to be as easy as clicking on the Amazon app.
You need to use the right solution to reach your consumers in a way that will make them flock to you
instead of your competition.
That solution is HealthQRS.
HealthQRS allows you to offer an entire online retail experience with one, easy-to-use platform. And we have developed the only complete e-commerce platform for healthcare on the market. HealthQRS is an e-commerce platform that you can brand for your hospital and that will keep consumers in-network. Our ecommerce platform gives people a full, rich retail experience in healthcare. When they login to the app on their smartphones, tablets or PCs, they see your logo and they think you are providing this experience. And you ARE providing the experience ... HealthQRS is providing the platform.
HealthQRS has created that easy-to-use app for healthcare that lets you offer everything and allows consumers to access everything from their smartphones. HealthQRS allows patients to see what their actual out-of-pocket expenses will be before they schedule services. Not estimates. Actual prices.
Consumers can make a telehealth appointment and connect to the doctor right on the HealthQRS app. If you are a payer and have a prescription mail deliver program, HealthQRS’ solution can connect right to that program, and fulfill the prescription during the telehealth appointment.
And the HealthQRS app can be branded for your hospital or health plan so it looks like YOU are offering this to your patients. Because you are. We just provide the technology platform.
HealthQRS makes healthcare easy. We make easy for people to buy YOUR healthcare.
We can help you beat your competition. Just like every with other purchase consumers make, they want a positive shopping experience with healthcare. They want choices. They want convenience. They want discounts. They want quality.
People want the Amazon experience. And you can give it to them. But you need the technology
infrastructure to provide this.
You need HealthQRS.
Our technology enables people to connect to more cost-effective, consumer-oriented healthcare
options and we keep them in-network. HealthQRS integrates fully to EHRs and can also enhance
existing portals and other patient engagement solutions, improve meaningful use numbers and increase meaningful use funds.
Also, HealthQRS will make you compliant now and in the future with President's Trump new executive order on price transparency as well as pending surprise billing legislation. We can provide contract rates via our solution as well as provide the consumer’s out-of-pocket cost along with quality of service. This is the second part of the order. In surprised billing legislation we support out-of-pocket cost to consumer and allow for one bundled bill as opposed to surprise bills from different providers.
How do we do all of this?
Our solution is built with complicated algorithms that use real-time data: the actual payer contracts by provider + insurance verification information + charity + other business rules to provide consumers with a true out-of-pocket per patient per procedure. HealthQRS interfaces with virtually any existing practice management system and electronic medical record. We have over 30 modules that work independently or all together depending upon your needs to provide a holistic, seamless, total experience for the consumer from start to finish. We combine navigation, the capability to make an appointment, referral management (if needed), payment management and so much more than we can list here.
Our solution is simple to use. We invite you to see for yourself with this 2-minute video of the
HealthQRS price transparency tool. Click on this link, then you’ll be instructed to download and watch: https://s3.amazonaws.com/hqrs.media/_misc/Screen+Recording+2018-11-29+at+17.30.45.mov
Developing a solution of this magnitude didn’t happen overnight. We started with the consumer
experience in mind and spent years drawing on the knowledge of best-of-breed experts to perfect, fine tune and put together this complicated, yet complete solution for medical e-commerce.
In fact, HealthQRS has over 15 years of experience developing healthcare retail experiences for people and our founders have over 50 combined years of e-commerce experience. We also invite you to watch our user-friendly app video that you can use to win consumers as well as our point-of-service solution video that may interest you. You can also check out our E-Commerce Medical Marketplace Flyer for more information.
Contact us right now to schedule a personalized demo. We can get you entire system set up in a matter of weeks. Looking forward to helping you.
------------------------------------------
1 Angelica LaVito, “CVS expands HealthHUBS to Boston, Dallas next year – targets cities with chronic disease,” CNBC, July 11, 2019,
2 LaVito, “CVS expands HealthHUBS,”
3 Jackie Drees, “Hospital execs turning to EHRS, patient portals to improve patient experience,” Becker’s Hospital Review, July 11, 2019,
4 Jackie Drees, “Hospital execs turning to EHRS,” https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/healthcare-information-
5 Carolyn Crist, “Most US patients not using online medical portals,” Reuters, Jan. 3, 2019,
Comments