Healthcare,
Re-Designed.

The private healthcare sector is highly fragmented. The collaboration partners recognise that this fragmentation has contributed to various inefficiencies in the interactions between key stakeholders. This is most evident between insurers and doctors. Health Connective is intended to provide the foundation to simplify these interactions.

Health Connective aims to simplify the interaction between insurers and doctors by enabling direct communication between both parties. In other words, the intention is to help reduce the reliance on other third party intermediaries to facilitate the relationship.

There are 2 main steps:

1. Encourage doctors who are open to include insurer-backed contracts in their practice to create and maintain their professional profile on Health Connective. This establishes a “master directory”;

    

2. Encourage insurers to carry out their contracting activities on Health Connective i.e. the contract will be offered to the doctors through Health Connective.

No.

Although the aggregation of doctors onto a common platform might appear similar to what TPAs offer, Health Connective is not a TPA solution provider. The differences are subtle but important:

1. Doctors contract directly with insurers i.e. there is no contract between doctors and Health Connective (or any of the technology providers enabling Health Connective). Health Connective is only a platform to facilitate the process;
   
   
2. Health Connective does not levy any transaction-related fees on doctors who join Health Connective. The cost of Health Connective is defrayed by other business activities of the various collaborating technology partners; and
   
   
3. Health Connective does not process claims.

Yes, these are claims-processing related activities.

However, these will not be functionalities provided by Health Connective. As part of the contracting process between insurers and doctors, the insurer will also advise doctors on the work processes that they have to comply with. 

These usually take the form of claims solutions that the doctors have to access. Whilst Health Connective do not own or operate these platforms, it can help to simplify the process for doctors by making it possible for doctors to access the different platforms through a single-sign on through Health Connective.

The strategic considerations are multi-faceted but many insurers have been reviewing their operational strategy and some have made concrete plans to reduce their reliance on out-source service providers to manage their relationships with their provider network. Health Connective provides a cost-effective alternative for these insurers to reach out to doctors directly.

Smarter Health and its collaborating partners have already reached out to insurers over the last few months to encourage collaboration on Health Connective. The concept has been well received. We are confident that many will come onboard progressively from Q2/2022.

However, the most immediate task at hand is for doctors who are open to include insurer-backed contracts as part of their practice to indicate their interest by signing up with Health Connective. Without the network of doctors, insurers will not find it attractive to migrate over to Health Connective.

Yes. You are encouraged to do so.

As Smarter Health and its collaboration partners continue to engage the insurers, some of your existing contractual arrangements may potentially migrate over to Health Connective. Maintaining your profile on Health Connective ensures that there will be no disruption to your ability to continue servicing the same patient pool.

Yes, you should.

Signing up ensures that your updated profile is available to insurers and their policyholders. The contracting arrangement with group practices will be slightly different but it will still require doctors to maintain their own professional profile.

No. Your inclusion on any panel is still dependent on the insurer’s internal review process and your acceptance of the contractual terms offered by each insurer. As each insurer has different requirements depending on the anticipated needs of their policyholders, the doctor-mix will also differ.

However, maintaining a profile on Health Connective ensures that you are “discoverable” to insurers. Insurers who come onboard Health Connective will be using our contracting platform to reach out to doctors.

In addition, if you are new to the private sector or have decided to expand your practice to include insurance-backed contracts, you can also apply to join panels through Health Connective.

First, you must create and maintain your professional profile on Health Connective. To do so, you can click here. Second, you need to review and accept the contractual terms of each contract offered by insurers. Depending on the insurer, these contracts are either initiated by insurers through an invitation on Health Connective; or you can apply to join the panel.

All notifications will be sent to the email and/or mobile no. that you provide when you sign up on Health Connective. Please ensure that you keep these details updated.

General practitioners (GPs) and specialist doctors who have been granted Full Registration with the Singapore Medical Council (SMC) can sign up for Health Connective. However, as the main objective is to facilitate the interaction between insurers and doctors, we would encourage doctors in private practice and those who have definitive plans to commence private practice to do so.

(For doctors in public hospitals, insurers will usually contract directly with the hospital.)

You should do so as soon as it is convenient. This will ensure that you do not miss out on any opportunities that may arise when insurers make their contract offers.

When you sign up on Health Connective, you create an updated professional profile which insurers will use to evaluate your suitability for inclusion onto their panels. To ensure that the information that you provide is accurate, you may be requested to provide supporting documents e.g. Practicing Certificate, Specialist Accreditation and Registration Certificates. Do have them on hand when you sign up.

No. We are unable to do so for two reasons:

1. The “Terms of Use” of the Singapore Medical Council website (https://www.healthprofessionals.gov.sg/smc/terms-of-use) clearly prohibits this; and
2. To comply with data security and privacy regulations

The sign up process is a once-off activity. We appeal for your understanding for this inconvenience.

No, creating and maintaining your profile on Health Connective is FREE.

The cost is defrayed by other business activities of the various collaborating technology partners. As an example, Smarter Health provides decision-support engines for auto-adjudication of claims to insurers.

Yes, if you have intention to include insurer-backed contracts as part of your practice.

Your profile will only be accessible to insurers who are onboarded to Health Connective for the sole purpose of facilitating the contracting process between the insurer and you. It will not be made available publicly.

As part of the contractual agreement between the insurer and you, the insurer may request for your permission to showcase your profile on their customer-facing interfaces e.g .websites, mobile applications so that their policyholders may locate you. This will require your explicit permission as part of the contracting process.

Yes. Health Connective is continuously looking for opportunities to simplify the interactions between doctors, hospitals and insurers. We are currently working with Clinic Management System (CMS) providers to enable all admission and claims related processes to be completed within the CMS instead of having to perform duplicate entries on other systems. These features will be rolled out progressively when they are ready.

We welcome all interested technology partners in the ecosystem to join the initiative – write to us at admin@healthconnective.sg. 

The CMS connection to Health Connective will be provided as an optional add-on feature in your CMS. Your CMS provider will advise you on the relevant cost.

Yes. You can still interact with Health Connective through a standalone portal. However, this will mean duplicate work for you and your clinic staff. You may want to evaluate your clinic’s administrative workload before making the decision.

We are currently working with Assurance Technology to effect the connection for their CMS, Clinic Assist, as a showcase for Health Connective workflows. With the launch of Health Connective, we anticipate that other CMS providers may also take the step to link up. We will publicise all collaborating technology partners on this site.

We will provide detailed instructions when the system is ready for connection. To comply with data security and privacy requirements, you will also be required to review and consent to the Terms of Use.

No. Absolutely not. The connectivity provided through Health Connective is merely to facilitate the data exchange. All data exchange MUST comply with all provisions of the data privacy laws. As such there will be a consent-based regimen in place where explicit consent is obtained from the patient before any data is retrieved or transmitted.

Health Connective can also be accessed as an independent portal. Alternatively, you may also consider asking your CMS vendor to contact us.

No. Health Connective does not store or have access to any data that is transmitted.

Health Connective will comply with the Personal Data Protection Act 2012. In addition, Health Connective uses secure socket layer (SSL/TLS) encryption technologies to protect customer data in transit. Our organisational certificates are issued by GlobalSign and have a minimum of 2048 bits in length. All implementation details such as the version of TLS being used, whether Forward Secrecy (FS) is enabled, the order of cipher suites, etc., are available publicly at Qualys SSL Report and our SSL report overall rating is consistently maintained at A+.