Imagine you’re on a vacation or a business trip in another city and you get sick, or suffer a minor injury. You need to see a doctor, but where? Your regular doctor is miles away, you don’t know anyone in this town who takes your insurance — and you realize that you left your medical ID card in your other wallet, back home.
Most people in that situation will go to an emergency room, which can be quite expensive as well as extremely inconvenient, since you may wait for hours to be treated for something that would take your regular doctor only a few minutes. But what other choice do you have?
Well, what if there was a simple app on your phone that could show you every doctor and clinic in your network, as well as options for virtual visits? What if the app could show you these doctors’ patient reviews, quality ratings, and how much the visit would cost, and let you schedule an appointment with the touch of a button? And what if it was personalized with a health checklist and your latest copay and coinsurance details, and even let you store your medical ID card right there on your phone?
That would be pretty handy, right? Well, we at Rally® are very excited about the launch of our new Rally CareSM app for mobile, which is well on its way to realizing that vision. Rally Care lets people find urgent care wherever they are, and takes some of the pain out of visiting a doctor with a few innovative features.
Rally has already come a long way in letting our users search for doctors or treatments using their actual, real-time insurance information, and in providing full cost transparency so they know what kind of payments to expect.
The reason the new Rally Care app is such an important addition to the Rally family of products is that it lets people carry their medical ID info with them at all times right there on the app. And they can quickly locate care and get price estimates no matter where they are, even if they’re far from their regular doctor or treatment center, or can’t get their provider on the phone.
What does that mean in practice? Well, we know that when people are searching for care when they’re on the go, it’s often related to something urgent, or even an emergency. So we’ve made it really easy for people to find all the nearby options wherever they are, whether it’s urgent care, convenience clinics, emergency rooms, specialists, or even virtual visits. So whatever kind of care they need, they can find out where to get it or how much it might cost immediately.
And one of the coolest features of Rally Care is that it fulfills our vision of letting you search for care just like you search for a restaurant or store when you’re in an unfamiliar neighborhood: You can use the map on your phone and find all the different care options around you, and most important, see what a visit will actually cost you based on your insurance plan.
Historically, visits to new doctors or treatment centers have been difficult: You need to have your ID card, know your copay and your deductibles for different care situations, keep track of your preventative care screenings, and so on. What we’ve done is make Rally Care act like a digital wallet in which you can store your relevant insurance information right on the app itself. This includes your medical ID card, your insurance balances (co-pay, coinsurance, and so on), and any recommended screenings along with ones you’ve completed. This can make visits much easier, especially when you’re visiting a new doctor or treatment center for the first time.
There is another way that Rally Care takes the sting out of urgent doctor visits, or even routine ones, and it’s a feature we’re so excited about that we were literally jumping up and down in the Rally office when we rolled it out.
When we were designing Rally Care, we looked at customer complaints about their health care experiences. Again and again, what came up is that the process of registering at a doctor’s office is something that people find incredibly tedious and frustrating. So we designed Rally Care so that you can use your phone to scan your ID card and it will pre-fill your registration information instantly. Such a simple idea, but it’s the kind of thing that makes a big difference, and it’s already been a huge hit. An updated version of Rally Care in the very near future will even let you schedule an appointment directly from the app.
All of these things bring us much closer to Rally’s mission to make health care no more complicated than finding a hotel or plane flight or a taxi with your phone. Just a few swipes, and you’re done. And when it comes to urgent care, that kind of thing can make a huge difference.
Karl Ulfers is Senior Vice President of Product at Rally Health. For more on how Rally can help your users search for doctors or treatments using their actual, real-time insurance information please contact rallysales@rallyhealth.com.
KARL ULFERS
Rally Health
