Global fertility, family-building and hormonal health platform Carrot is expanding its reach with the addition of 4,200 new contracts across all U.S. states and more flexibility with payments.
"This expansion, I would say, is unparalleled in size. It is very significant, but there is also a very rigorous approach that we're doing to provider selection," Asima Ahmad, chief medical officer of Carrot, told MobiHealthNews.
"Anyone can go out there and say, 'Okay, we're going to include all those clinics,' but we are not including every single clinic. We're making sure that they fit the criteria that we think are required to continue to yield high-quality outcomes."
The company says the new contracts include clinics and providers across all 50 U.S. states, joining the company's network of more than 17,000 providers nationwide.
Additionally, its Carrot Card will include cost-sharing capabilities, like coinsurance and copayments.
Carrot offers a platform for employers to provide extended access to care from pre-pregnancy through menopause and parenting.
The Iowa-based company offers services for gestational surrogacy, adoption, pregnancy and postpartum care, parenting and return to work, menopause/low testosterone, IVF and IUI, and egg, sperm and embryo freezing.
The company's offering CarrotMatch uses datasets with more than 200 metrics to score providers on quality, cost of care and established outcomes. It then matches Carrot's members to a provider according to their needs.
Ahmad said the company vets its providers through extensive analysis and only considers those who meet specific quality metrics.
"How many single embryo transfers are they doing? What are their clinical pregnancy rates? What are their live birth rates? When people do get pregnant, what are the miscarriage rates, and the preterm rates?" Ahmad said.
"The reason why these values are important, or these metrics are important, is we want to ensure that people are having high success rates, and that once they are getting pregnant, they are also having a healthy pregnancy by reducing those high-risk multiple gestation pregnancies."
In addition to matching patients with providers, Carrot also offers the Carrot Card, which functions as a prepaid debit card that is funded by employers or benefits providers.
The card can be used in 50 currencies and includes built-in currency conversion. It works like a healthcare debit card tied to an employee's fertility benefits.
With the company's newly announced payment offerings, Carrot can receive and pay providers' and clinicians' claims directly, which the company says eliminates the need for U.S. members to wait for reimbursement.
"[Patients] walk into the clinic, the ones that accept a Carrot Card, meaning they are in the network, and you would be able to make your payment for your treatment through that card," Ahmad said.
"We found that the card provided equity across the board, because not everyone has a lot in their savings account to be able to pay out-of-pocket and do a reimbursement model."
Ahmad said that the Carrot Card can now be used for things like coinsurance and copayments as well, if a member would like to use the card for cost sharing.
"The thing about Carrot is we're always looking for ways to improve access to care, and having more options is definitely one way to improve access," Ahmad said.
