Ep. 22: Price Transparency - Brennen Hodge (CEO Citizen Health)

Brennen Hodge, founder of Citizen Health. I first saw Brennen’s pitch at the Distributed Health conference in 2018. His passion to fix healthcare has driven him to build a fair healthcare marketplace and PHR that will enable patients to seek services that they need with prices clearly displayed. Citizen Health wants to rebuild healthcare for the next generation. Website: citizenhealth.io Community: https://hq.citizenhealth.io Email: brennen@citizenhealth.io Udemy Blockchain/Healthcare Course ($125 off with HEALTHUNCHAINED coupon): https://www.udemy.com/blockchain-and-healthcare/?couponCode=HEALTHUNCHAINED Show Notes •Introduction of Brennen's background •Brennen’s previous startup, Pharmedio, inadvertently enabled fraud among pharmacy benefit managers and pharma sales reps. •Origins of Citizen Health •On Jan 1, 2019, hospitals across the United States became responsible for providing the prices of services that they offer to the public in a “machine-readable format”. This mandate is part of the CMS’s Inpatient and long-term care hospital prospective payment system rules. This is a step in the right direction but doesn’t necessarily help the patient make decisions about their healthcare •Price Transparency •Citizen Health is a Public Benefits Corporation •Cost of healthcare •Humantiv – Consumer Personal Health Record Platform •Medoplex – Healthcare services marketplace •Health Service Token HST – ERC-721 tokenized services •Private practices and direct primary care providers accepting cash-based payments will be initial users of Medoplex •Smart contracts and insurance claims processing •Medit MDT (ERC20) token launched June 2018 •Medex MDX (ERC20) - listed security token •OpenFinance security token listing for MDX •Personal Health Asset PHA ERC-998 health investment account – each human is gifted one PHA (can store MDT and MDX) – part of future 2020 roadmap •Asynchronous telemedicine can provide uber-style clinical services •Proof of Health Algorithm – How is good health determined? Is this health score number personalized to the individual? •People with pre-existing conditions are encouraged to use Humantiv •Open Source/Access and crowdsourcing is essential for fixing healthcare •Bioelectric pharmaceuticals •Artificial Intelligence will drastically augment the clinician’s work to improve patient care •Favorite business person – Elon Musk •Roadmap News Corner: In 2019, hospitals are mandated to publicly post their prices for their services online. This mandate is part of the CMS’s Inpatient and long-term care hospital prospective payment system rules. However, many in the industry say that hospitals are posting the bare minimum to comply with the mandate. This includes chargemaster medical codes, some abbreviations, and prices in a way that’s not easy to understand for most people. Additionally, most people don’t actually pay the chargemaster prices and insurance companies negotiate prices with hospitals to get better deals for the members. Some argue that it would be more helpful to post average prices they accept from insurers but this could reveal hospital negotiated secret prices. CMS has requested information from the public to improve the new rules so that patients have a more clear idea on what they are required to pay. They will consider information in future rulemaking. https://www.cms.gov/newsroom/fact-sheets/fiscal-year-fy-2019-medicare-hospital-inpatient-prospective-payment-system-ipps-and-long-term-acute-0 https://khn.org/news/as-hospitals-post-sticker-prices-online-most-patients-will-remain-befuddled/