NEW YORK – Native American physician Ish Singla, interventional cardiologist at Springfield Clinic and his wife Deepali Singla have launched a website to give patients around the world a way to post and read reviews of hospitals, doctors and companies health insurance ; called HealthSoul.com.
Deepali got the initial idea for the website during her high-risk pregnancy for their now one-year-old twins.
Already parents to 9 and 4-year-old daughters, the Singlas searched online for consumer reviews of local hospitals and doctors, but found little information, according to a State Journal Register report, but were ultimately happy with their selection of a Springfield. Obstetrician Clinic and HSHS St. John’s Hospital, where the twins, born 12 weeks prematurely, spent two months in the neonatal intensive care unit.
Costing around $ 100,000 to develop so far, the website has been used by around 70 people, mostly colleagues and friends in the United States and abroad. Ish is hoping they get more from online marketing because he wants HealthSoul to be a more comprehensive and in-depth website for healthcare consumers than Yelp and HealthGrades.com.
According to a 2016 article in the American Bar Association Journal, a 2015 survey by market research firm Mintel Group Ltd. found that 54% of those surveyed said online reviews influenced their purchases.
“The credibility of these reviews is essential for the markets to continue to buzz and consumers to come back again and again. But too much of a good thing can raise eyebrows. The Mintel survey showed that 57% of consumers were suspicious of companies that had only positive reviews, ”the article said.
Singla said revenue from the website, which is free to consumers and healthcare providers, will be generated from advertising and fees that doctors’ offices can pay to be able to request appointments for patients through the site.
The website is packed with features including:
- Suppliers can also post their ratings on HealthSoul for free and the packages they can purchase will allow them access to additional features on the site as well as the use of positive reviews on their own websites.
- Doctors, hospitals and insurance companies will be able to create free accounts and respond to consumer reviews, but they will not be able to block or edit them.
- In addition, patients who wish to post on the site can register and create their own user credentials while having the option of remaining anonymous.
- The software on the site can detect when users post multiple reviews as a form of harassment or when they may post fake reviews and those reviews can be deleted or blocked.
- The site uses a five-star rating system and asks reviewers to rate hospitals in five categories: overall satisfaction, physician care, nurse care, hospital cleanliness, and hospital catering.
- Doctors will be assessed on categories such as hospital care, outpatient care, explanations of diagnoses, confidence, ease of booking appointments, and wait times.
- Insurance companies will be evaluated based on factors such as customer service, cost satisfaction and claims handling.
- Patients can post questions to the site that other users and healthcare providers can answer.
- Patients who are “users” on the site can learn from other users while hospitals and insurance companies, who are “providers” on the site, will have “a way to improve the patient experience by providing timely feedback ”.
Singla said HealthSoul will eventually integrate this health care performance data from the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Singla also noted that hospitals that score high for patient experiences tend to have better scores for “patient outcomes” and that government-released patient satisfaction scores are limited in their usefulness because all of them. patients are not interviewed.
Ish attended medical school in India before coming to the United States for training in internal medicine and cardiology and was at the Springfield Clinic for four years while Deepali holds an MBA.
