Bean Town Times

While President Trump has worked with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services since his inauguration in 2017 to unravel regulations that cause physicians stress, Dr. Paula M. Muto founded UBERDOC in 2016, an online health care platform that connects doctors directly with patients.

“It's a flexible model,” Muto told the Bean Town Times. “We're agnostic. We're not against insurance. We just want to make the first step in the process between a patient and a doctor much more efficient and of much higher value. Right now the only option you have to get seen by a specialist is to go to an emergency room and hope they call one in urgent care.”

Through UBERDOC, patients pay $250, outside insurance, to skip the line and get a priority appointment with a physician, either in-person or via telemedicine.

UBERDOC allows online appointments for patients and specialists. | Pixabay

Although the initial fee is not always reimbursed by insurers, Muto says patients can switch from direct-pay to insurance coverage after the first tele-visit with an UBERDOC specialist.

“We don't guarantee reimbursement because many insurance companies have measures that prevent purely straight cash,” she said. “We don't promise anything. The only exception is Medicare patients who pay $50, and then the doctor bills Medicare the remaining balance. So a Medicare patient only pays $50.”

About 3,000 doctors across 45 states offer their services through UBERDOCS with a larger concentration in early adopter states like Massachusetts, Florida, New York and California.

“UBERDOC is trying to remind people that medicine is a peer-to-peer relationship,” Muto said in an interview. “Medicine does not require a fancy building. It doesn't require thousands of people in the CAT scanner and all the rest. Nothing is more apparent than COVID-19 where you can connect to your doctor on the intimacy of a telemedicine visit where there's no one in the room but you and your physician.”

UBERDOC was developed in response to the frustrations doctors were experiencing administratively. 

“The frustration came from all of these decades of build up on who should be in charge of your health care and when employers are buying the health care and when the government's buying the health care, the stakeholders are no longer the patient or the doctor and you're taken farther and farther away from the value of the exchange,” Muto said.

According to an Aimed Alliance study, the barriers that insurers create for medical practices has caused 48% of primary care physicians to consider getting out of medicine, and 67% said they would not recommend a career in medicine to aspiring medical professionals. The study noted another 42% are considering moving to a practice that does not accept health insurance.

“If I recommend a treatment, I then have to employ someone to now get on the phone with the patient’s insurance company to get approval for that treatment or to get approval for testing to see if the patient even has the disease,” Muto said. “It used to be just the expensive tests and treatment but now for even a $200 test, you need approval for it.”

UBERDOC improves the transaction by removing the middleman, which is the insurer, at least initially, Muto said.

“Employers really like us because we're off the grid,” she said. “When you don't use your insurance coverage, you can instead use your health savings account.”