Transparency and Access for Healthcare Consumers

Transparency in healthcare is vital to help avoid or reduce the varying disparities that exist and continue to burden the overall medical field in this country. Technology in healthcare is growing and has mitigated some of these disparities, even helping close some of the gaps that have been magnified. But there is still more progress to be made and seen as access remains a top concern.

What kinds of technological advances can help improve healthcare access?

Discussing this subject on the newest episode of Highway to Health, host David Kemp interviewed Paul Ketchel, CEO and Co-Founder of MDSave, a platform that helps healthcare consumers compare and weigh medical costs and prices. The two talked about the state of healthcare today, what areas need improvement, and how his company offers resolutions to some of the issues facing the healthcare industry.

Kemp and Ketchel further explored the topic and talked about …

1. Ketchel’s background and building a healthcare platform
2. Ways in which technology is a problem solver
3. Why and where healthcare technology falls behind in creating access

Ketchel detailed how innovative ideas drive change and how it’s benefitted his own, and naturally his company.

“For me innovation is, you know, using the newest technological advances and tools to solve what has traditionally been very large, difficult problems, or problems we haven’t been able to solve in the past. And fortunately, for companies like mine and maybe unfortunately for the rest of the world, healthcare is full of those problems, and I always tell folks I feel like one thing that’s been disappointing from the view of an innovator is that we’ve not really applied that technology to a lot of areas in healthcare yet,” he said.

He continued, “Things are getting better and we’re trying, but you know I think it’s safe to say we’re probably 20 solid years behind other sectors,” said Ketchel.

Paul Ketchel is the CEO and Co-Founder of MDSave, Inc., which he helped found in 2012. Before co-founding the company, he was the COO of Diagnostix Network Alliance, LLC for two years and had other roles in government relations and business development. Ketchel is an alumnus of University of Tennessee-Knoxville where here he received a degree in political science.