After losing their health plan due to unemployment or high monthly fees, customers see healthtechs as an alternative to the Unified Health System (SUS). The number of startups offering the service in Brazil has practically doubled in the last four years, according to a survey by the Distrito innovation platform.
Patients traumatized by bad experiences in the relationship with doctors and traditional operators have been praising the welcoming of healthtech service providers, the intense use of technology and the lower prices. But not all customers adapt to the new model and there are, among specialists, doubts about the financial future of companies.
By the end of June, there were 34 healthtechs of this type in operation in the country. At the end of 2018, there were 18. According to some of the main companies in the sector (QSaúde, Sami, Alice and Kipp Saúde, from Grupo Omint), there has been an increase in demand and in the execution of contracts in the last two years. Many of these companies’ customers were without supplemental health coverage before hiring them. Of almost 9 thousand Sami customers, more than 75% had no plan. Almost half (45%) of the approximately 13 thousand QSaúde customers were in the same situation.
“Consumer demand for healthtechs has increased, as well as familiarity and satisfaction with this type of digital company”, says physician Vitor Asseituno, president and co-founder of Sami. There, 75% of the services provided by the health teams (comprised of a family doctor, nurse and care coordinator) are digital.
Under the concept of primary care, whose logic is to accompany clients to prevent and avoid the aggravation of diseases and, thus, reduce costs, they represent healthy competition with conventional operators and cause changes in supplementary health practices.
Alice’s total customers grew tenfold from December 2020 to December 2021, the company says. From 674 members to 6 thousand. Today, it has about 10,000 members.
“We seek to promote health in a more humane and efficient way for our members”, says André Florence, CEO and co-founder of the company. Alice’s model has four pillars: focus on primary care and care coordination; close monitoring of all client health needs; intensive use of technology and remuneration of providers according to customer satisfaction and the clinical outcome achieved.
reception
After resigning from the company where she worked for 20 years and giving up her plan, car and other benefits, businesswoman Charmene de Cara, 38, researched the startups’ proposals and chose Alice. “I’m suspicious of health plans because I have chronic diseases and I suffered a lot with supplementary health care”, she says. “I think Alice’s doctors do ‘intensive’ empathy. I have never felt so welcomed and seen my health taken care of globally. The plan even accepted the running advice in the monthly fee, which I paid separately,” she says.
According to Vanessa Gordilho, director general of QSaúde, a challenge has been to present the model to the public. “While traditional plans know little or nothing about their customers, they only pay expenses and then pass expenses on to the annual readjustment, we monitor each customer’s record to effectively take care of their health.” Launched in October 2020, at the height of the pandemic, QSaúde reached about 13 thousand customers, in 2022, about a thousand new lives per month.
“Having a health plan is at the top of the benefits most desired by Brazilians. Kipp Saúde was designed for people who seek effective, more technological and easier service”, says Cícero Barreto, commercial and marketing director of Grupo Omint.
Future
For those who require direct access to specialist doctors and a list of many hospitals and laboratories, startups may not be a good option. In general, they have contracts with a limited number of service providers and some offer attractive remuneration to specialists who agree to serve their clients exclusively. Thus, they ensure that the doctor prescribes drugs according to the previously agreed list (generally, medicine with good health results at an acceptable price) and do not ask for excessive tests and unnecessary procedures.
For experts, it’s impossible to exercise that control if a plan offers dozens of hospitals and hundreds of doctors. “Healthtechs have lean networks, but it’s not necessarily bad. It’s the future”, says Gustavo Gusso, from the USP School of Medicine. “In 10 years, the big operators will probably also offer few providers. Otherwise, the plans will be unfeasible. We need to get used to this change.”
Despite the good initial impression reported by customers, there are doubts about the business model. Sami laid off 75 employees (15% of the workforce) in June. The basis of supplementary health is mutualism, as in social security. Plans collect money from the healthy and use it to pay the sick bill. It is very difficult to have mutuality with less than 30 thousand customers (a mark that no healthtech has reached).
If a plan has 300 people and one of them has an accident and stays in the ICU for a long time, the readjustment will be very high because the cost of treatment will be shared among the members of this small group. It is also unknown whether the need to go through the primary care team will represent a filter so closed that the patient does not reach the specialists if he gets sick and needs expensive resources.
Sami’s client, physical therapist Alana Pereira Bastos, 26, says she is satisfied with the service, cell phone appointments and access to good hospitals, but advises to evaluate well. “Since I don’t have a disease that requires long and expensive treatment, I thought it was worth the low monthly fee and running the risk of the company not working out and customers being left without assistance,” she says. “For the person with a serious illness, it is necessary to reflect well and evaluate the pros and cons.”
The information is from the newspaper. The State of São Paulo.
#Orphans #health #plans #turn #healthtechs #double #Brazil #ISTOÉ #DINHEIRO