7A – Testing the Hypothesis, Part 1

Trivago For Healthcare

·     Opportunity: 

o  Hospitals are now required to list their prices online, which will create competition between healthcare facilities. People should be able to easily compare prices and quality of healthcare.

§ The who: Americans who visit hospitals and healthcare facilities

§ The what: They should not pay for overpriced healthcare if quality of facility is not excellent

§ The why: Just like you could compare car prices, hotel prices, and flight prices, people should be able to compare healthcare facility prices before spending their money

·     Testing the who: The “who” does not necessarily refer to only people in America. There are millions of people throughout the world who need healthcare attention and spend way too much money to get it. The majority of the “who” would be people who frequently get sick, are prone to injury, or are older in age.

·     Testing the what: People pay an absurd amount of money at hospitals without knowing the type of care they are going to receive. 

·     Testing the why: Since hospitals need to list their prices online, a website should be created that can easily compare prices and quality of service of those facilities.

·     Interview #1: This interview was with a 22 year old female that attends college. She mentioned that she had an experience with a hospital and overpriced charges for healthcare that was not excellent. She said that a Trivago type of website for healthcare facilities would be a great idea. She mentioned she was use this when she needed to visit hospitals.

·     Interview #2: This interview was with an older female who throughout her lifetime has had many visits to the hospital. Although she is older and not as tech savvy, she believed that comparing hospital prices and their quality of service is necessary. She thinks that healthcare facilities charge too much for their services.

·     Interview #3: This interview was with a 20-year-old male. He never had thought of comparing hospital prices because he believes the bills from the hospitals would not change much from facility to facility. After presenting him with more information, he changed his mind about going through the effort of comparing prices online like he would do for flights.

·     Interview #4: This interview was with a professor at the University of Florida. She has recognized the problem with hospital prices long before it was required that they be on the hospitals websites. She believes that being able to compare hospital prices would have many positives, but certain healthcare facilities would see fewer patients.

·     Interview #5: This interview was with a 21-year-old female. She had not given much thought to the prices at hospitals because she has never been to the hospital for an injury or illness.

·     Given your interview, what do you know about the opportunity that you didn’t know before?

o  The interviewees made me realize that a Trivago for healthcare would be essential and helpful for people who frequently visit the hospital. 

o  The interviews also made me realize that people do not think about hospital charges or comparing hospital services as they would do flight prices as frequently as I had thought.