CareVoice: This startup wants to steer people away from hospital scams

China’s healthcare system is riddled with challenges. In public hospitals, where anything from cancer to colds is treated, patients often queue for hours before seeing a doctor. Some physicians handle 70 patients a day. While private institutions might have smaller caseloads, they have issues of their own.

“Private for Chinese consumers isn’t associated with good quality care because you have local private operators who have bad reputations,” explains Sebastien Gaudin, CEO and founder of The CareVoice, whose service offers reviews and ratings of different healthcare institutions.

“At the same time, you have international ones – the first ones who came [to China],” he says. “It’s very, very expensive.”

Over the past decade, China’s private healthcare industry has grown steadily and rapidly.

Sebastien believes that’s mainly due to high prices and a lack of transparency around quality of care. Some healthcare services have serious conflicts of interest with hospitals and doctors, and take consultation or referral fees, he says.

“They need each other to operate their service,” he says. “It’s just the business.”

The CareVoice wants to offer a more independent service by working with insurance providers and corporations instead. Insurers and employers pay for yearly subscriptions to The CareVoice’s app, which reviews and rates various preventive care services at premium hospitals and clinics.

Reviews come from patients, who can leave comments and rate services via the app. Users that have been subscribed can also access other information about services, like their costs, depending on what kind of insurance they have.

A one-year subscription costs on average US$36 per user, though prices vary across different insurers and employers, says Sebastien.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here