George over at Patient Centric Healthcare blogged about using mobile phones’ texting capabilities to get insurance company deductibles and other information. Nice idea, worth reading — somebody will make some money off of it. He says:
Imagine texting your plan for an immediate response on:
- Your deductible
- Your FSA balance
- Your copay on a specific drug
- Whether a provider is in network
- The status of your prior authorization
- A list of formulary alternatives
Krista
While this sounds like a great idea, I can’t really see it happening any time in the near future. Making a call to your insurance provider usually takes a significant amount of time, so I can’t imagine they would be able to respond via text very quickly. They would have to automate the system, and that would involve quite a bit of time and patience.