5 ms·
Google gives One Medical 10% of their revenue, plus they have OM offices embedded in Google offices. I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees
by shmatt 4y ago
Google gives One Medical 10% of their revenue, plus they have OM offices embedded in Google offices. I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees
Personally my experience with One Medical went from amazed in 2015 to pretty bad by 2019. They will charge your insurance for a doctors visit but only have Nurses and P.A's available to see. I don't even know the legality of that, but it definitely didn't feel like they were replacing having a personal doctor follow your health
The few M.D's i did like left within a year or two, always
- atlasunshrugged 4y agoIf you're looking for a more boutique experience and being able to see an actual doctor, I highly recommend Forward Medical (goforward.com) which I've used for a few years and have had nothing but great experiences with.
- FollowingTheDao 4y agoI am just looking for health care but what can I do? I am just a homeless guy with schizoaffective Bipolar and Ankylosing Spondylitis trying to get better so he can work again.
- hammyhavoc 4y agoRough hand. Know you've got someone thinking about you in the UK.
- pibechorro 4y agoCharity can more than help those who fall through the cracks. Th Charity of individuals, nonprofits and private companies that realize investing in helping people will help their brand. Think of all the money that is wasted in todays system. Its not a lack of money,its how its badly spent and all the red tape in between. Much more efficient to let individuals manage it than a burocracy based on forced taxation which leads to a lack of accountability as poor performance still gets funding.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- sithadmin 4y agoForward went from being great in 2020 when it launched in Washington DC to absymal these days. Lots of MD/DO turnover, really poor follow-up, and you have to argue with them to get an appointment within a reasonable time (no, I don't want an appointment 5 weeks from today for what is a very painful ear infection today, thank you very much). They've also dropped the ball several times for me when referring to specialists. Forward's 'body scanner' thing and 23andMe results interpretation are both embarrassing farces, imo. The former much more so than the latter, but even the docs will admit that their use of genetics information is basically a dog and pony show that rarely if ever impacts how they approach care. I've given up and joined a concierge medical practice attached to a local hospital instead. It's only ~25% more expensive than Forward.
- nerdjon 4y agoI don't like the genetics or that weird scanner side of Forward. For me Forward has primarily been an anxiety thing. I have really bad anxiety largely around health issues. (Real or not) and I have found that since being with Forward that at least the idea that I can talk to someone at any point helps with that anxiety. I do recognize that a lot of that is placebo, but being able to help with anxiety without medication is preferred to me. That being said, they are only just now opening up in Boston so it will remain to be seen how they actually perform in person and not virtual. But their competition here is... its a low bar to be better.
- orzig 4y agoThanks for the details, I was surprised at the 23andMe outsourcing of genetics. I didn’t want to give mine to that company and (while I’m sure that was in the fine print) I assumed I was only going to be dealing with the company I actually signed up for. Forward outsources a lot of their clinical stuff, so the service ends up being much less premium
- srockets 4y agoIt's as if for-profit health isn't really useful for quality of treatment.
- curiousgal 4y ago> medical care > boutique experience Man, Americans say the weirdest $h@t
- lotsofpulp 4y agoPrice segmentation and product tiering is an inevitable consequence of supply not meeting demand. I expect the same to happen (or already happening) in the UK.
- beej71 4y agoIt makes perfect sense in the context of one of the most insane healthcare systems in the world. :)
- dixie_land 4y agoOne medical offices I’ve been to are definitely much nicer, the lobby / waiting area (not much wait, that’s the selling point) feels more like say a WeWork reception than a doctor’s
- orzig 4y agoWe know it’s bad, and while we vote for better, we also need to get problems solved in the near term.
- curiousgal 4y agoVoting won't fix anything until the electoral college and gerrymandering are abolished but that's an entirely different debate.
- orzig 4y agoStrong disagreement Forward was expanding to my city and I joined based on SF friend’s recommendation. They charged me a total of $500 without ever actually opening the office. When I requested a refund they said they could only give one month, then took so long to process that I got another monthly charge in the meantime! I had to follow up weekly for months just to get back to the original promise. Bad, bad experience, and I’m not even medically complex.
- ImJasonH 4y agoTo clarify, "Google gives One Medical 10% of [One Medical]'s revenue." The first time I read it I interpreted the "their" the other way, and was quite surprised! :D
- gennarro 4y agoJust to echo this - OM was incredible for years but has fallen off a cliff in terms of service, responsiveness, overall quality. There are more offices now but Dr quality is worse and the early set of amazing staff and Drs have all left. It’s better than the old days of finding medical help but still not what it was.
- BurningFrog 4y agoHard to know what is pandemic disruption, and what is genuine OM deterioration.
- gennarro 4y agoI’d just note that the deterioration was happening to a noticeable extent, at least in NYC, pre pandemic. Quality might have better in SF and other places, I’m not sure. The top Drs remain very hard to see and booked for weeks if not a month now.
- dalyons 4y agoSF area has declined too; long response times, high dr churn. This whole discussion has validated what I’d been noticing!
- kelnos 4y agoOdd, that's not been my experience in SF. I've only had one primary physician leave on me in 2018 (I'd been with him for 2 years, but only had visited once). My primary doc responds to messages within a day or two. Responses from the general care team are usually same-day. My primary physician is usually booked out a couple months, which is a bummer, but I can get next-day appointments with a PA or NP, and usually 2-3 days with an MD. On top of that, it's been mostly easy to get prompt COVID testing when I've needed it, and for a while they even had 8-hour PCR test results. For the most part I'm still very happy with the service, though this news about the Amazon acquisition is definitely making me question whether or not I will renew next year.
- petilon 4y ago> They will charge your insurance for a doctors visit but only have Nurses and P.A's available to see. That little scam is used by my local hospital also. If you don't ask for a specific doctor when you make an appointment you get a PA (Physician's Assistant). Then they bill the same amount as a doctor would. The justification is that the PA has access to a doctor if needed. So presumably you are getting the same level of service, since the PA can talk to the doctor if needed, so this expands his abilities to the same level as a doctor. This practice is legal. To avoid getting a PA specifically ask for a "MD Doctor". If you don't say "MD" they will give you a PA even if you ask for a "Doctor".
- ornornor 4y agoI’m always in awe at all the ways the system in the US finds way to screw you over. This one is amazing.
- petilon 4y agoThe problem is that the US is not a true democracy. Because of lobbying (a form of legalized corruption) [1], big corporations are in control of the country. The laws are written by big corporations such as oil companies, big pharma, hospitals, gun manufacturers and so on. See revolving door [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobbying [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolving_door_(politics)
- idunno246 4y agoEven more fun, my primary care office billed a visit to insurance under the PAs name, so insurance treated it as a specialist. So they tried to charge the higher copay… had to get them to resubmit with the doctors name, despite not seeing them, to get the cheaper rate That said, my experience with pa vs md hasn’t really been that different, they all just follow the same flowchart
- throwawaycuriou 4y agoWild. The technicality of earning a doctorate to be called a doctor is no more.
- dehrmann 4y ago> I wonder if this continues and Google lets Amazon employees on premises to collect medical information about their employees This is so disconnected from Google's main business it doesn't care. It'd be more likely to cut the benefit entirely to save money.
- umeshunni 4y agoAn Update on One Medical: "When we looked at usage of the benefit, we saw that less that 1% of our employee base were DAUs of the benefit, so we have decided to discontinue the benefit and focus on other efforts instead"
- JohnBjorge 4y agoThis is something I know a little bit about. I'm not a fan of this bait n switch practice either. As others have said one reason it's done is to increase access and/or reduce costs. > They will charge your insurance for a doctors visit but only have Nurses and P.A's available to see. I can't comment on how One Medical bills for this sort of thing. But almost always, at any other "standard" clinic/hospital/etc, they will get reimbursed by the payor for 80% of what a physician would get paid for an equivalent visit. As a general rule of thumb, payors reimburse mid-level providers (nurse practitioners/physician assistant/etc) at 80% of the physician equivalent reimbursement. If you do a little napkin math you can see why there is a financial incentive to use mid-level providers. Say a family physician makes $250k and a nurse practitioner makes $125k each year, and if they bill for a similar amount of visits in dollars each year, say $500k worth. For the physician the clinic has a $250k profit, for the nurse practitioner they have a $500k * 80% = $400k, minus the $125k salary, so $275k profit. I have no idea about other tradeoffs (quality, access, etc) regarding the use of mid-level providers in replacement of traditionally physician services.
- drc500free 4y agoOM seems to be trying to move all the personalization into the technology layer, and treat the actual providers like interchangeable widgets.