Developing (Live)

March 19th:

• Developing… (updates regarding stimulus legislation expected soon)

March 18th:

• 6:00 PM: DC case count increase to 39
• 10:00 AM: DC Mayor Muriel Bowser shares availability of SBA Disaster Loan Assistance

March 17th:

• 6:00 PM: DC confirms 9 new Corona cases, a 40% increase (though sample size is incredibly small!)
• 3:30 PM: DC Council passes emergency legislation including eviction + utility protection for residents, simpler qualification for unemployment
• 10:00 AM: Compass Coffee significatnly reducing operations, including large layoffs

March 16th:

• 8:00 PM: DC confirms 5 new cases (22 total), including a DC Metro officer

March 15th

• 7:30 PM: Federal Reserve custs interest rates to 0
• 7:30 PM: CDC provides new guidelines on mass gatherings
• 6:00 PM: DC Updates Health Advisory on Mass Gatherings

March 14th

7:30 PM: 16 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Washington DC

4:00 PM: Trump tests negative for Corona Virus

March 13th

4:00 PM: Muriel Bowser announces temporary ban on gatherings, preventions of evicition and utility shutoff among other reliefs

3:45 PM: Trump announces $50 billion in emergency funding among other forms of financial aid, public-private partnership with leading retail health clinics

2:30 PM: WMATA to reduce Metro service to 12 minute intervals

11:35 AM: Trump to declare national emergency

10:45AM: National Cherry Blossom Festival cancels Parade + PetalPalooza

10:15AM: Smithsonian to close starting March 14th and will evaluate hours on a weekly basis

10:00AM: DC will close Public Schools, Libraries, and implement telework for certain DC gov agencies

Previous

March 12th: Nearly all local organizations have acknowledged the Corona virus in some shape or form. Precautions and actions vary by organization. Take a look.

March 11th: DC declares public health emergency

March 10th: 10 confirmed cases in Washington DC

— —

Sign up for email notifications (Live)

Sign up here for email notifications from RelayCare using a DMV zipcode. (FYI, we are a small team based out of Navy Yard, check out our site here for our upcoming RelayCare app)

Email frequency will be vary from weekly to daily depending on how the Corona virus emerges.

Government (Live)

DC Government | Live Updates | (202) 442–5955 (DC Health)

• DC case count increase to 39 (March 18)
• DC Mayor Muriel Bowser shares availability of SBA Disaster Loan Assistance (March 18)
• DC confirms 9 new Corona cases, a 40% increase though sample size is incredibly small (March 17)
• DC confirms 5 new cases (22 total), including a DC Metro officer (March 16)
• DC Updates Health Advisory on Mass Gatherings (March 15)
• 16 confirmed COVID-19 cases in Washington DC (March 14)
• Muriel Bowser announces temporary ban on gatherings, preventions of evicition and utility shutoff among other reliefs (March 13)
• DC will close Public Schools, Libraries, and implement telework for certain DC gov agencies (March 13)
• Bowser directs $5M to Corona Virus Response (March 12)
• Events with few more than 1K attendees should be avoided (March 11)
• 10 confirmed cases in DC (March 11)

US Federal Government | CDC Live Updates

• Federal Reserve custs interest rates to 0 (March 15)
• Trump tests negative for Corona Virus (March 14)
• Trump announces $50 billion in emergency funding among other forms of financial aid, public-private partnership with leading retail health clinics (March 13)
• US total cases: 1,215 | Deaths: 36 (March 12th)

World Health Organization | Live Updates

• COVID-19 Declared as Pandemic (March 11th)

Hospitals (Live)

Map of DC Hospitals (Google)

Bridgepoint Healthcare| Homepage | Locations

• No updates posted (March 13th)

Children’s National Hospital | Live Updates | Locations

• Visitor screening policy update (March 12th)

GW Hospital Center | Live Updates | Locations

• Limited Visitation Policy (March 10th)

Howard University Hospital | Homepage | Locations

• No updates posted (March 13th)

MedStar (Georgetown)|Live Updates | Locations

• Temporary Visitor Restrictions During COVID-19the common areas (March 12)

Sibley Memorial Hospital | Johns Hopkins Updates | Locations

• How Johns Hopkins is Preparing for Corona Virus (March 11)

United Medical Center | Homepage |

• Emergency Board Meeting (March 13th)

Washington DC VA Medical Center | Live Updates | Locations | 202–745–8000

• Situation Update (March 10th)

Health Insurance (Live)

Aetna | Live Updates |

• Aetna to waive cost-sharing for COVID-19 screening, provide care packages (March 11)

Amerigroup | Live Updates | 1–800–600–4441 (Member Services)

• What is Corona Virus

AmeriHealth | Homepage | 1–877–759–6279 (Nurse Hotline)

• No update posted on website (March 13)

CareFirst | Live Updates | (800) 535–9700 (Nurse Hotline)

• Cost-sharing waived for medically necessary diagnostic testing (March 6)

Cigna| Live Updates |

• If you are a Cigna customer, we will waive all co-pays and cost-shares for Coronavirus (COVID-19) testing (March 11)

Health Services for Sick Children | Live Updates | 202–467–2737 (Customer Care Services)

• Coronavirus News Updates (March 12)

Kaiser | Live Updates | 202–346–3000 (near Union Station)

• Costs waived toward COVID-19 screening or testing (March 11)

Trusted Health Plan | Homepage | (202) 821–1100 (Enrollee Services)

• Enrollee Letter waiving screening costs (March 10)

UnitedHealthcare | Live Updates |

• UnitedHealthcare will cover testing for Coronavirus (COVID-19) at approved locations for insured, Medicaid and Medicare members (March 12)

Transit (Live)

WMATA | Live updates | Do not ride if sick

• WMATA to reduce Metro service to 12 minute intervals (March 13)
• Additional cleaning of MetroAccess vehicles (March 12)

Amtrak | Live Updates |Reduced availability

• Amtrak reduced number of trains between DC and NYC due to rider demand (March 12)

Lyft | Live Updates | Do not ride if sick

• Driver and Rider Safety (March 10)

Uber | Live Updates | Do not ride if sick

• Keeping drivers safe and cars clean (March 10)

DC Emergency Services (Ambulance) | Website | Dial 911 for Emergencies

• Significant medical bills can be associated with emergency transportation

DC Health | Website | (202) 442–5955 (inquire about treatment transportation)

Schools (Live)

DC Public Schools | Live Updates

• DC Public Schools will implement distant learning through 3/31. Spring Break moved to next week, no in-person classrooms (March 13)
• Schools closed March 16 for professional service day (March 11)

American University | Live Updates

• Spring Break Extended, Classes will resume online until April 3 (March 10)

Catholic University | Live Updates

• Classes will move online starting March 18 (March 10)

Gaulladet | Live Updates

• Classes will switch to online starting March 23 (March 10)

Georgetown | Live Updates

• Classes will switch to online until further notice (March 11)

GW University | Live Updates

• Classes will switch online until April 5 (March 10)

Howard University | Live Updates

• Classes will move to online until April 6 (March 11)

University of DC | Live Updates

• To be confirmed: classes switching to online

Employers (Live)

US Federal Government | Live Updates

• SEC becomes first federal agency to request employees work from home (March 9)

DC Government | Live Updates

• Mayor Bowser announces agency-specific telework schedule for DC gov employees (March 13)
• Muriel Bowser declares public health emergency (March 11)

WeWork | Live Updates

• Confirmed: Facilities will remain open with rotational staffing, local programming has been cancelled

More (Live)

• National Cherry Blossom Festival cancels Parade + PetalPalooza (March 13)
• Smithsonian to close starting March 14th and will evaluate hours on a weekly basis (March 13)
• Kennedy Center cancels all events until March 31 (March 12)

Urgent Cares (Hold)

For non-corona virus symptoms, Urgent Cares are a much more cost effective solution for delivering care. Until directed by public health officials, we are not recommending Urgent Cares for Corona Virus treatment.

Our Background:

Thanks for reading. I am Ben Pugh, the founder of an upcoming healthcare platform, RelayCare, where real-time healthcare updates can be shared among friendly communities. While we are *weeks* away from launching, we had to focus our immediate attention on the public health emergency declared in DC. In the future, you’ll be able to get these updates on our mobile app, not just on a medium article :)

Please help us continue to update by sending new information and corrections to ben@relaycareapp.com

American Hospital Association sues to block CMS proposed rule to post prices for consumers.

I don’t have the time to put together a list of facts so I’ll keep it short. Basically:

1. It is unscientifically 250x harder to use your healthcare than it is to get a chicken sandwich delivered to your door. Even the Popeyes.
2. The government proposed a rule that would make hospitals post their prices online, kind of like how restaurants do. Baby step towards a decent healthcare experience.
3. AHA (the American Hospital Association of ~5000 hospitals) is suing to block this.

If they have their way, we might never know the cost of healthcare.

Come on guys, this sucks.

Without speculating too much, I often come across 1. that the price of caring for a patient is a “secret.” and 2. that “posting prices is a lot of work.” Trust me. I know more than anyone.

If we had universal healthcare with 0 out-of-pocket costs and no HSAs, fine keep your negotiations a secret.

But today, where we the people still pay the $8000 deductible first, how about you throw us a bone. Or we will use technology to build it anyway.

— — — — — —

Since we started Haven, life has been well… extremely busy! Our team is relentlessly building the platform that will let you know how much your healthcare will cost and whether or not it will suck (experts jargon this up as “healthcare consumerism” “price transparency” and “access”). If you feel the same and want to get involved(whether small or large), let’s connect. In particular, we are looking for a killer data scientist or health actuary who wants help transform healthcare datasets into something useable. (And yes, I code too :))

Recently, I wrote about my struggle to use my health insurance in the middle of an emergency. To make things better, I started a project here in DC called Haven (mobile link). We help you use any insurance to find your specific healthcare quickly and easily.

Today, I’m excited to share that we have added support for Washington DC’s Hospitals and Urgent Cares with all medical insurances.

Here are some of our findings along this journey.

Gotcha #1: Find the right urgent care

One does not simply “search for healthcare.” Even Google, the staple of the internet, wasn’t quite able to help me find the right urgent care fast enough.

My top 4 search results gave me (1) a far-away location (paid advertisement), and (2–4) three Kaiser Permanente doctors. Not great options given that we needed to get there fast and I do not have Kaiser for my insurance.

What we did about it

Haven let’s you use your current location on your mobile phone to display closest urgent care that is in-network for your health insurance. The interface is simple and works with all insurances:

Simple interface with a quick filter between “all” and “in-network” searches based on your specific insurances

Gotcha #2: “Of course we take your insurance”

Even if you were to sit down and google every single urgent care in DC, you will run into quite a bit of misleading information about which insurances they take. (“We accept all insurances” is often taped in the window).

Just because an urgent care will “take” your insurance doesn’t mean they are in-network. This means higher charges and even balance-billing (i.e. you pay for 100% of the difference beyond what your insurance would have paid somewhere else).

What we did about it

We called the insurers and put together an aggregated “in-network” list for urgent cares by health plan. We based our search off of this information, and not the window advertisements.

When you search, it will automatically check against the insurance you have attached to your profile:

While not a guarantee for in-network status, this best-estimate allows you to make more informed searches on the go. As always, the best-practice is to confirm insurance status with both your doctor and insurance company prior to rendering services.

Gotcha #3: Getting There Might Cost an Arm and a Leg

Several years ago, I was having chest pains. Our building’s security called an ambulance (their standard procedure, perhaps to limit their own liability?) to take me to the emergency room. Truly scared myself, I simply agreed to go along with this recommendation.

The ambulance bill was $900 for a short car ride. An Uber would have been 14 bucks. That’s like an Uber a week for a whole year.

What we did about it

We added the ability to quickly “trigger” an Uber from the app. Look — this is no replacement for real emergencies where a real ambulance is needed. This is to say, if you don’t need an ambulance, you have a quick no-brainer way of getting where you need to go.

Haven: Make your insurance work

Don’t just take our word for it, give it a spin!

Haven: Make your insurance work the way you want it to

Thanks for reading! Our team is working around the clock to bring in more providers and more features. If this story resonates with you, I’d love to swap stories. Send me an email at ben@myhavenhealth.com and we can improve this experience together.

We all have one of those stories

For me, I was working from home on a Friday. I had an early-morning conference call while my partner was cooking Ezekiel toast and getting ready for the day. Everything felt pretty standard — until the piercing shriek from the kitchen. I rushed in to find that the knife blade slipped through the frozen loaf and deep into her pinky.

We needed medical attention immediately.

Scarred by a recent horror story of $1000+ bill to ride an ambulance several blocks, I was determined to “do it right this time” and use our insurance. Ah, but the most painful part was about to come.

Trying to use our insurance was like solving a rubik’s cube while the entire airplane is on fire

Where can we go? How far away? How many stars do they have on Yelp? And the unspoken: will we be broke when it’s all said and done?

We didn’t have a favorite urgent care. We didn’t have an account for the insurance company’s portal. I didn’t know her password to her work laptop, company intranet, or how to even begin navigating through that jungle. I was left playing a high-stakes game of Google guess-and-check with websites built in the early 2000’s. Meanwhile, she was scrambling to find her insurance card without getting blood all over the carpet.

To top it all off, none of these sites loaded well on mobile.

The short version: after 10 frantic minutes we gave up and rolled the dice at the nearest urgent care because neither the bleeding or the insurance was getting solved anytime soon. Our struggle before ever stepping foot outside:

1. “Identify” which insurance we could use (mine, hers, could we even try and use our parents still?)
2. Figure out where we could go (somewhere close would be nice!)
3. Guess if the quality of the place was any good (“what’s its rating, and what do the pictures look like?”)

It seems to me that the tech-goodness we have enjoyed over the past decade has not yet reached consumer healthcare. Frankly, it is jarring when the most useable part of our experience was the ride-sharing (Uber), the directions search (Google Maps), and the (restaurant) reviews (Yelp!).

Let’s build something that works

For the past several months, I have left my job in the pursuit of building something that *just* works. I am proud to share our project, “Haven”, a webapp that lets you:

• Find the best healthcare provider on any insurance plan, more specifically *your* insurance plan
• Save your healthcare providers and insurance preferences (and without needing your social security number or any other combo of 10+ digit codes)
• Make all of this happen from your phone

These features are simple, and yet it is already leaps and bounds above what (you might have not known) is out there.

And we are growing this list quickly. Today, we support Dental and Vision insurances in Washington DC, and we are working around the clock to bring in medical coverages too.

Haven: Make your insurance work the way you want it to

If this story resonates with you, I’d love to swap stories. Send me an email at ben@myhavenhealth.com and we can improve this experience together.