A Booster Shot For Health Care

The new health care reform law requires employers with more than 50 employees to provide coverage by 2014. Passage of reform may prove to be serendipitous for Seattle-based Qliance, which is targeting companies looking for lower-cost health care options for their workforce.

Qliance Medical Group operates its own clinics and charges patients a monthly fee, from $44 to $129 for primary care, depending on the patient’s age and the level of service. This coverage includes checkups and basic diagnostic services like X-rays and blood tests. If extra services are needed, Qliance passes the bill on to the patient without tacking on its own fee. Qliance’s model is designed to work in conjunction with a separate policy for catastrophic coverage.

CEO Norman Wu says that for the 80 employers signed on with Qliance, savings of 25 percent over traditional insurance plans isn’t outside the norm. “Companies with less than 250 employees regularly save 10 percent, while other companies can sometimes save as much as 30 or 40 percent.”

Evie Carr, the human resources manager for Seattle’s Mighty O Donuts, was shopping for employee health care and found traditional insurance too expensive for Mighty O’s staff of 20. Qliance cost around $60 for each employee, while traditional insurance was closer to $110.

Qliance’s care doesn’t suffer because of the lower cost, Carr says. “When I had insurance at other jobs, I remember waiting in a room almost an hour, and the doctor spent 10 minutes with me. I usually spend 45 minutes with my doctor at Qliance.”

Michael Storbel, the executive administrator for Becker Trucking in Kent, switched the company to a Qliance plan in January after finding out that premiums would increase 9 percent under the old plan. The company has since cut its health care costs by 11 percent.

Qliance has also been targeting unions. Large unions like United Food and Commercial Workers are helping bring Qliance’s services to other states in order to provide less expensive care for all of the union’s members.

A recent $6 million round of venture funding came from Bezos Expedition, MSD Capital and comedian Drew Carey, in addition to previous investors. The majority of this money is going toward building a better software platform for Qliance’s physicians. The current platform is run with insurance companies in mind, and Qliance hopes to sell its platform to clinics with similar business models once it is fully developed.

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