ZocDoc and billing shenanigans

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InvestingDoc

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ZocDoc was started by a physician and is one of the largest booking platforms for patients online. They boast over 6 million monthly users. Patients can download an applications, put in their insurance info, and in seconds find a doctor who might be able to see them same day.

The service was previously $300 a month per doctor (a flat fee). In 5 states they have rolled out pricing of $300 for practices up to 5 doctors in size and a $35 booking fee for each new referral for primary care, I believe it is $70 for new derm or procedure based specialty referrals, and $100 for new plastic surgery referrals.

This new booking scheme would increase my monthly bill from ZocDoc by up to 1000% for the new doctor who has joined my clinic.

They tried this last year and apparently put plans on hold in NY and Cali after negative press and worries of legality of this.

The new booking prices makes it almost unprofitable for doctors who sign up for their service. Lets say you make $110 for a new physical, overhead being around $35ish per practice, this means that you will take home $40 or less for the visit. Not to mention you take on the malpractice risk while ZocDoc takes on none of this risk.

Always have multiple streams of patient referral bases. I see primary care doctors in town who have been only using ZocDoc for their booking software for years and have all their patients go through that software. Now, they will severely be feeling the pain.

If you are not in Texas and not in one of the other 5 states that ZocDoc has switched to this billing structure, be very cautious. Things are changing.

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I don't use Zocdoc, but this is absolutely not worth it for most doctors. I suspect that if they continue this pricing scheme, the platform will die. If enough doctors pull out from using this, then they have no business model.
 
I don't use Zocdoc, but this is absolutely not worth it for most doctors. I suspect that if they continue this pricing scheme, the platform will die. If enough doctors pull out from using this, then they have no business model.

They claim a 90% retention rate of doctors on the platform for now but I suspect this will drop as it was recently implemented in other states. We will see what happens but I suspect another app will take over once there is competition.
 
They claim a 90% retention rate of doctors on the platform for now but I suspect this will drop as it was recently implemented in other states. We will see what happens but I suspect another app will take over once there is competition.
That’s like dollar general increasing their prices 5x. Whatever business you had with previous pricing scheme will be gone.
 
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