ELuminate Health Wins Prize, Eyes Arkansas as Test Market

Northwest Arkansas will be an early launch market for a health care product designed to bring together buyers and sellers of medical procedures based on transparency of price, quality and customer satisfaction.

“We’re a marketplace where there’s not a marketplace,” eLuminate Health president and CEO Tami Hutchison said.

Essentially an open network, eLuminate allows patients to choose from a network of providers while giving them information on the quality of the physicians and the prices they charge. Hutchison said eLuminate benefits physicians because it expedites payment; insurers because it eliminates claims processing; and consumers and employers because it drives down costs via competition.

Hutchison came up with the model while earning her MBA at the University of Arkansas. One of the model’s primary aims “is to bring standardization to common procedures” like imaging tests or a tonsillectomy, she said.

“The problem we’re solving is there’s tremendous variability for the same procedures within the same market,” she added.

The company operates on a transaction-based model that varies by procedure. The transaction market for such a company, Hutchison said, “is estimated to be $10 billion in the private sector only, not including government payers.”

Hutchison plans to launch with providers in April or May, and with employers and health plans in July. Both Northwest Arkansas and the greater Kansas City area, where the company is headquartered, likely will be early markets.

The company recently won the $15,000 grand prize at the Hackovate Health Innovation Competition, which was designed to identify innovative mobile, online, social and other applications to help consumers navigate the new health care landscape. That pales in comparison, however, to the $1 million Hutchison said eLuminate has attracted from private investors.