When Shaun Young’s child came down with pink eye over Easter weekend, it not only was every parent’s common experience, but it also helped support the idea behind Young’s fledgling company.
“Why is it the kids never get sick during business hours?” Young said, chuckling.
The company, Ardina, is a health-care membership company providing 24/7 telemedicine support with licensed physicians, plus discounts on out-of-pocket health-care expenses such as prescriptions and dental services.
It’s not a health-care plan; it’s a supplement to health-care plans. After Young launched Ardina last month, he likened it to a AAA auto-club membership.
“Like AAA has roadside assistance available 24/7, Ardina has a health-care professional available to talk,” he said.
Not that Young, 37, needed to talk to a doctor to answer questions about his child’s illness. Young started his working career as a pharmacist, “so I’ve been on the front line of health care,” he said. “Then I went to work at my first corporation, Wal-Mart, about the time the Affordable Care Act passed.”
Then he was vice president of consumer health care at Cardinal Health.
“So I’ve seen both sides of the equation,” he said.
Seeking to launch a business, Young looked at his experience — such as those times when a child gets sick on a holiday — and realized there was a large niche waiting to be filled.
“The first thing I thought about when I was leaving my job at Cardinal was, ‘OK, what do I do about health care?’ ” he said. “Everyone needs health care, but health insurance, like car insurance, was more for a catastrophic event for me, so I had a really high deductible.
“I started to think about how we get what we need when we need it.”
He asked for help from Rev1 Ventures, the technology-business incubator formerly known as Tech Columbus.
At Rev1, Ardina participated in “Concept Academy,” a program for startups that gives entrepreneurs “an express lane for getting their companies off the ground,” said Tom Walker, president and CEO of Rev1 Ventures.
The program pushes entrepreneurs such as Young to “listen to customers, build a product that customers want and solve real problems no one else has solved,” said Kristy Campbell, chief marketing officer at Rev1.
Although it seems obvious for a startup to test what potential customers want, entrepreneurs often have a vision and passion for something and move forward without taking the common-sense step of asking real customers what they want, Campbell said.
But Young eagerly listened to Rev1’s instruction and, as a result of that experience, the idea behind Ardina “just kept evolving,” Young said.
Ultimately he developed two plans for people who want to supplement their health insurance.
Ardina’s basic plan, at $10 a month, provides unlimited telephone or online service with doctors, discounts on prescriptions and a location-based price-checking tool.
The other plan, at $20 a month, adds discounts on dental, vision, lab and chiropractic services as well as an on-call advocate to help members navigate and negotiate the health-care system.
The more-expensive plan mimics the kind of service that people who work for large employers might receive in network plans. When Young realized that, it wasn’t long before he developed the next step in his fast-evolving company — joining with health-care brokers — and began testing the concept by visiting small businesses and giving free presentations to explain the health-care system in general, plans available to individuals and Ardina’s supplemental program.
“We’ve been pleasantly surprised at how younger consumers in the … freelance economy are taking a lot of interest,” said Stephanie Murnen, Ardina’s chief customer officer.
Health-care brokers appreciate the way the Ardina team is able to make the system more understandable to the average customer, said Eric O’Brien, an insurance broker with Mosaic Employee Benefits, which specializes in individual and small-group health insurance and is one of Ardina’s partners in the small-business presentations.
“Whether you’re a law firm, a beauty salon or a retailer, the landscape can be confusing for every small business,” O’Brien said. “Our joint program aims to help businesses and individuals find the best insurance option for their families as well as understand supplemental options.”
Ardina will continue to offer personal memberships even as it joins with health-care brokers, Young said. But small businesses have an added incentive in asking for Ardina to explain its plan.
“This can help small business retain and attract talent,” Young said. “We found a survey that said people prefer doing their taxes over signing up for health care. We also understand that this is one of the busiest times of year for people, which is why we’re trying to demystify the process and ensure it’s more efficient for everyone.”
Date: October 29, 2015