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Highmark's Doctor Match website new to Delaware market

Delaware Public Media

Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield Delaware has a new tool for connecting Delawareans to doctors.

Doctor Match is kind of like a dating website for healthcare. Patients and Highmark doctors fill out an online questionnaire designed to match them based on shared values and personality traits. The questions have to do with things like wait times, alternative treatments and bedside manner.

Stacey Byers is Vice President of Digital Strategy for Highmark. She says the online program offers insight into a doctor’s character patients will not find in a provider directory.

“Some people want that doctor to come with a fully prescribed list of you do this, you do this, you do this. Others are really looking for a doctor to listen to their point of view around their ideas about health and healthcare,” said Byers.

Doctor Match has been available in the Delaware market for a couple weeks now for primary care and OBGYN.

It got its start in Western Pennsylvania last fall where officials say about 100,000 patients and physicians have set up profiles.

Byers says she hopes the algorithms will link patients to doctors they want to return to, and that will have a positive impact on their overall health.

“The idea is that if our patients can have a much more personal relationship with their doctors they will be much more likely to adhere to medication and to various treatment protocols and ultimately we will see better health outcomes,” she said.

Byers adds you do not have to have Highmark insurance to set up a profile.