Improving Care Coordinator Options and Matches
A key challenge of any health and disability care coordination service is matching the right service to the right problem, at the right time. Issues with capacity are often a challenge - especially in smaller markets where there are fewer providers of care chasing what can be a limited number of consumers.
Apheleia is focused on helping to solve this problem by reducing information asymmetry in the market. Information asymmetry occurs when some market participants have more or less information about a particular problem than others. In the case of the NDIS this information asymmetry manifests in two key ways.
Firstly, as a matching problem between service options and service need. This is the most common lamentation of participants of the NDIS. They find that the care they need isn’t available or at times not adequate for their needs. Consider a high needs Autistic person who requires more advanced training of their carer than most support workers are equipped to provide. Inappropriate matching here can and often does lead to bad patient outcomes and a disgruntled support worker who despite trying their best may not be fit for the role. There are many examples of this matching problem in healthcare.
Information asymmetry additionally manifests as a problem with preferred provider capacity and bookings. Care Coordinators often find that their preferred providers do not have the capacity to deliver at a time that is convenient for the participant. Due to the lack of readily available information about other providers capability and capacity Care Coordinators may not find the best match. On an aggregate system level this can result in systemic surplus capacity for newer, less trusted providers who are less trusted than those older, more established providers of care who are simultaneously at or over capacity.
By reducing information asymmetry in the NDIS market Apheleia aims to make the market more efficient and enable the system to treat more people, more efficiently.
