Castlight Health raises $100M more

Castlight Health, a software as a service company that gives employers information about health care treatment options and costs, raised $100 million in a Series D round of funding from two "major" unnamed mutual funds, as well as T. Rowe Price, Redmile Group and previous investors.

Castlight brings bargain hunting to health care

Many consumers love to hunt for deals for airplane trips or flat-screen TVs, but for a knee replacement or heart bypass, the term “bargain-basement” is somehow less appealing.
Castlight Health brings the art of the deal to the health care sector, giving consumers the chance to compare prices and explore options before they pay for a medical procedure. The San Francisco-based company saw a 250 percent jump in revenue in 2010 and has five companies, such as Safeway, that use its online platform in addition to their existing health care insurance program, with nearly 100 more companies eager to get on board.

Health care consumers start to use websites to make decisions

It’s not online nirvana yet, but websites that help consumers compare hospitals and other health care providers on cost, quality and customer satisfaction — which have been around for years — may finally be starting to gain some traction.
Paul Markovich, executive vice president and chief operations officer at Blue Shield of California, had been a skeptic — not so much about the quality of information being offered, but about how frequently consumers were using the data to make important decisions.
But now he appears to be seeing some light at the end of the transparency tunnel. By transparency, Markovich and others mean giving consumers, the public, and health care entities themselves access to specific quality and cost data that can help drive decisions and improve care.