Playbook, healthtech app
The plan price is not the price of being seen
A health subscription is two prices pretending to be one. There is the monthly amount, and there is what happens when somebody books a consultation, which on some plans is included a set number of times and on others is charged every time. Underneath both sits a third cost the service does not set at all, which is the medicine itself.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for pricing questions holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A plan carrying a set number of consultations turns the pricing question into an arithmetic question, and the figure that decides it is what the consultation after the last included one costs.
- A prescription issued during a consultation is dispensed somewhere else, so what the medicine costs is set by whoever dispenses it and appears on nothing published here, which is exactly what people write in about afterwards.
- A large share of the people asking are not paying at all, because an employer or an insurer funds the access, so for them the whole page is about what falls outside the funded part.
- No price can be given for a person's own situation, because working out what somebody would need means working out what care they need, and that is the line this page exists to sit behind.
How it arrives
- how many consultations do i get on the basic plan
- what happens after i use up my included appointments
- does the price include the medication
- my employer pays for this do i pay for anything
- is a follow up charged the same as a first consultation
- how much would it cost for my whole family
What has to be indexed for this to work
| The plan comparison, with the consultation allowance on it | Each plan, what it costs, how many consultations it carries and what the next one is charged at. The allowance belongs in the same table as the money, because a monthly figure without it answers a question nobody asked. |
|---|---|
| What is charged outside the subscription | Consultations beyond an allowance, any test or report, and anything a clinician arranges that the service bills for. Written as a list of exceptions, since the assumption a new subscriber arrives with is that the monthly amount covers everything. |
| A plain statement about what medicine costs | That a prescription is dispensed outside the service, that its price is set there, and where somebody finds that out before they commit. One paragraph, and it prevents a complaint that is really about a bill from somebody else. |
| How funded access changes the answer | What a person on an employer or insurer arrangement pays, what still falls to them, and what happens if a funded allowance runs out part way through a year. These are the people least able to work any of it out from a public price list. |
The reply
The plans and what each includes are on the pricing page, and the number worth looking at is the consultation allowance rather than the monthly amount, since the charge for a consultation after the allowance is listed against each plan [1]. Medicine is dispensed outside the service, so what it costs is set by whoever dispenses it and is not part of the subscription [2]. If your access is paid for by an employer or an insurer, what falls to you is different again and it is covered on the same page. I cannot see your plan, price anything for a particular person, or work out what anybody would need.
It moves the reader from the monthly figure to the allowance in the first sentence, because the allowance is what produces the second bill. Separating the medicine cost is the one thing that heads off a complaint weeks later about money the service never took. The refusal covers both what it cannot see and what it must not calculate.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor asks what their own care would cost, describes a condition in order to get a figure, or asks about a funded arrangement held by an employer or an insurer.
I cannot price a particular person's care or see what any arrangement covers, and working out what somebody needs is not something I am able to do at all. Leave your name, an email and what you are trying to find out, and the team will come back to you.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never quote a figure that is not on your own published price list, including a consultation charge inferred from a plan.
- Never estimate what treatment, testing or follow up would cost a person, because that means deciding what they would need.
- Never state the price of a medicine, since it is dispensed outside the service and priced there.
- Never say a plan is suitable for somebody, or better for a situation they have described, whatever the plan pages claim.
Questions
- Should the consultation allowance really sit on the price table?
- Yes, next to the money. Almost every pricing message here is somebody trying to work out the second charge rather than the first, and a table carrying the allowance answers both at once.
- People ask which plan is right for them. Can it recommend one?
- It can compare what each plan includes. It must not decide which one fits a person, because that judgement is about how much care they are going to need, and it has neither the information nor the standing to make it.
- Why publish anything about medicine costs when we do not charge for them?
- Precisely because you do not. Somebody who believed the subscription covered it feels charged twice by a service that charged once, and the complaint lands with you rather than with whoever dispensed it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a healthtech appHealth data is a special category and clinical claims carry device rules. What a healthtech assistant answers for patients, and for buyers.
- Handling pricing questions in generalPublished price versus the price for this buyer. Bands, ranges and from pricing, and why a firm number for unscoped work is the damaging failure.
- The person seen and the person billed are often not the sameThe receipt someone claims back on, the invoice that goes to an employer, and why neither of them should state a clinical reason.
- The person who wants out did not sign up, and cannot leaveFunded access ends without the user deciding, and the record stays behind. Notice, the last day, and the copy taken before it rather than after.
- A refund request about care is not a refund requestA dropped call, a consultation cut short, and a refund asked for because the answer was unwelcome. Three requests, and two different routes.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.