HealthShare working with Medibank to support informed specialist referral decisions

HealthShare, Australia’s leading digital health company, is working with Medibank to give its members and their GPs access to additional information about specialists who participate in Medibank’s GapCover arrangements, helping support more informed healthcare decisions.

This update is designed to empower Medibank’s customers and their GPs with relevant information at the point of referral. Drawing on historical claims data, patients and GPs will be able to view information about a specialist’s participation in Medibank’s GapCover arrangements, including historical out-of-pocket cost information for some procedures over the previous 12 months.

Users will be able to easily identify specialists who participate in the Medibank No Gap program. The program aims to help eligible Medibank members reduce out-of-pocket costs for included treatments and services as part of a hospital admission for select surgical procedures, provided the procedure is performed by a participating surgeon at a participating hospital. 

Choosing the right specialist is an important healthcare decision, with a range of factors influencing what is most appropriate for each individual patient. By making GapCover information more readily available alongside specialist information, HealthShare and Medibank aim to give its customers and GPs greater visibility of the options available to them and support informed conversations about specialist care.

Specialist referrals are a crucial part of the care GPs provide, and access to relevant, up-to-date information can help GPs guide patients through their healthcare journey. The additional information will be available through HealthShare’s Specialist Referrals Directory, which is used by more than 26,000 GPs each month, as well as through HealthShare.com.au, which attracts more than 10 million annual visitors.

Rami Weiss, Co-founder at HealthShare, said:

“We’re proud to work with Medibank to give patients and GPs access to more useful information when considering specialist care. Choosing a specialist is an important decision that takes into account a patient’s individual needs and circumstances. By making information about Medibank’s GapCover arrangements more accessible at the point of referral, we can help GPs have better-informed conversations with their patients and support patients to make decisions that are right for them.”

Senior Executive of Member Health Programs at Medibank, Nathan Crothers said:

“We want to make it easier for our customers to understand and navigate their healthcare options. We know that people are delaying seeing specialists due to costs, so we’re really pleased to be working with HealthShare to give our customers and their GPs greater access to information about specialists participating in our GapCover arrangements at an important point in the patient journey. This can help support informed discussions between patients and their GPs and give our customers greater confidence when making decisions about their care.”

Medibank GapCover information is available through Medibank’s Find a Provider tool and HealthShare.com.au

About HealthShare

A Best Practice Premium Partner, HealthShare is a dominant player in the Australian digital health landscape, with industry-leading products, a large userbase of patients and health professionals, and products that are integrated across the health sector. 

HealthShare’s goal is to connect and engage healthcare stakeholders to improve patient outcomes through our 3 digital platforms: 

• Practitioner Directory Platform – helping patients and GPs find the right Specialist and Allied Practitioners based on their specific needs 
• BetterConsult Consultation Engagement Platform – helping optimise the patient-doctor consultation via a sophisticated pre-consultation clinical smart questionnaire 
• Online Bookings Platform – helping streamline appointments for patients and filling empty appointment slots for practices 

Over 10 million Australians use HealthShare’s products every year as well as tens of thousands of GPs, non-GP specialists and allied health practitioners.