Opkit, a health insurance verification platform for telehealth providers and virtual medical clinics, has launched with $1 million in funding.
The startup participated in Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley accelerator program, and garnered investment from Global Founders Capital, Socially Financed, Y Combinator, Mischief and Rex Salisbury, a former partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
The New York-based company offers a platform with two main components: a web dashboard where users can manually input, verify and track a patient’s insurance coverage and an API that engineering teams can use to verify coverage programmatically. The program automatically re-verifies insurance coverage for returning patients before each visit.
“Telehealth is an entirely new business model that stands to make healthcare more inclusive, accessible and affordable. But providers need updated tools that are built for a virtual care environment. That’s why we built Opkit, to reduce administrative burden for this next generation of healthcare providers,” Justin Ko, Opkit’s cofounder and CTO, said in a statement.
THE LARGER TREND
The majority of healthcare consumers have used telemedicine at some point in their lifetime, and most insurance companies cover some form of telehealth service, though this can vary by state.
Another company offering a health insurance verification tool is medical booking platform ZocDoc. Through its Insurance Checker, patients can select their plan, verify their insurance information, and share it with a doctor as they book an appointment.
Wendy Paul and Kyle Longhurst will offer more detail in their HIMSS23 session “Using Machine Learning to Reduce Discharge Medication Errors.” It is scheduled for Thursday, April 20, at 2:30 p.m. – 3:30 p.m. CT at the South Building, Level 4, in room S401.
