New Google Maps Tool Shows Providers’ Network Affiliations

New Google Maps Tool Shows Providers’ Network Affiliations

by Peter Johnson

Google Maps will show users searching for health care providers which health insurance practitioners will accept — and health care insiders say that the new product could transform how patients access health care. However, they caution that Google, a division of Alphabet Inc., must be diligent about updating and refining the information it displays, especially if it hopes to expand its advertising and data analytics businesses into health care at a large scale. 

Accuracy Will Depend on Providers 

• A Dec. 2 blog post by Hema Budaraju, senior director of product for health and impact at Google Search, indicates that Google will largely rely on providers to keep the information up to date, though the company will also work to validate the information. 
• In an emailed statement to AIS, a Google spokesperson wrote that “we source the healthcare provider information shown on Google Search from a combination of public and private sources, prioritizing comprehensiveness and freshness so that people have access to the most up to date information,” in response to a question about how insurance information is gathered. 
• The spokesperson added that the “pre-populated list of insurance networks…is not a comprehensive list of all insurance networks in the US,” but that “we are working on improving coverage over time.” 

Google Has Broader Health Care Ambitions 

• The new product certainly fits into Google’s broader health care strategy. In an interview with AIS Health in October, Amy Waldron, Google Cloud’s global leader for health care and life sciences solutions, said Google is working on “data and analytics that are coming from cloud technology and from collaborations between payers and providers.” 
• Joe Paduda, principal of Health Strategy Associates LLC, tells AIS Health via email that “I applaud Google for doing this, but would caution users for multiple reasons.” 
• “Provider-payer affiliations are pretty complicated, can change, and may not include all the healthcare providers in a particular office, location, or practice. A physician may be part of [a large carrier’s] Medicare Advantage plan and the Exchange plan but not the group health PPO,” he explains. 
• Ashraf Shehata, KPMG’s national sector lead for health care and life sciences, makes a similar point. “For this to really enhance value to the consumer, it has to give you more than just a binary answer [of whether a provider is in-network]. Your question has to be qualitative….It has to break down types of plans and maybe give you other shopping preferences.” 

Company Could Be Poised for Success 

• Yet Shehata says Google is well-positioned to have the best health care data. As he points out, Alphabet has retained market dominance in search and online maps over rivals by building the best web crawling and data scraping software in the business. 
• “Google’s market strength is using the tools they have to pre-populate the data,” Shehata says. “Validating it, certifying it — that’s going to be the commercial strategy.”

From Health Plan Weekly

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