Zable Health launches to bridge patient-specialist gap

A new, healthcare navigation platform, Zable Health (Zable), has launched to empower healthcare professionals in their mission to connect with patients through the provision and receival of private medical referrals.

Founded in 2020 by entrepreneur Matthew Gregory and physiotherapist Scott Gentle, Zable was designed with a clear mission to make private healthcare simpler, faster and more accessible for all Australians. With Zable, patients and carers can now find, assess and request to book a suitable private healthcare provider for their specific needs, equipped to filter search results by geographic proximity, telehealth capabilities, availability, fees and medical expertise – with a feature to easily upload and action medical referrals too.

This tool will greatly help patients who are lost in their efforts to action single specialist or open referrals from healthcare professionals. Even prior to a formal launch, more than 100,000 patients and carers are already visiting Zable every month to search for quality, private healthcare services, demonstrating high demand for this service.

“At a time where patient accessibility, engagement and service transparency are more important than ever, Zable is an invaluable resource to connect patients and medical specialists, whilst supporting core business efficiencies around referral pathways for healthcare practices,” said Zable Co-founder, Matthew Gregory.

“While we deeply understand and endorse the expertise of healthcare professionals providing specialist recommendations, this is often an opaque process. Many still rely on basic online or paperbased directories; their mental ‘black book’; and word of mouth. And we know they often have restricted access to specialists’ true availability, fee structures and areas of medical specialty and training.”

“This causes bottlenecks on the specialist side, and the onus falls on patients and carers to find appropriate and available specialists in moments of heightened need. New figures show more than a quarter1 of Australian patients avoid accessing specialist care when they have a referral in hand – a serious cause for concern for patients and healthcare professionals alike.”

Aside from aggregating useful data, Zable helps medical specialists to attract the right patients at the right times to their practices – with patient privacy and security, assured.

According to the CommBank Patient Experience Insights report, 40 per cent of patients reported they lack confidence in finding the care they need and 28% of patients avoid seeing a specialist after receiving a referral. Additionally, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s Patient Experiences in Australia Survey shows 1.91 million Australians delayed a private practice specialist appointment at least once or did not see a specialist at all following a referral from their doctor.

According to Private Healthcare Australia data, Australians’ out-of-pocket payments for common medical procedures in the private system have increased by 300 per cent in five years.

In 2019, the Australian Government launched its Medical Costs Finder platform to help patients find and understand the typical costs of common private health procedures.

To date this $24 million opt-in undertaking has seen limited uptake by medical specialists opting in to display their fees (20 individual specialists as of May 2024) – but it remains an overdue service for all Australians.

“Zable supports medical professionals to improve practice efficiency and to deliver highquality care,” said Zable Co-Founder, Scott Gentle. “Aside from aggregating and publishing useful data, we have a purpose-built feature which allows patients to upload their referral letters and start the journey of connection to a medical specialist – that in itself will help to mitigate the issue of letters getting lost or failing to be actioned.

“Our goal is to enhance and support the existing healthcare framework. We have taken extensive measures to ensure our platform aligns with clinical practices, and integrates seamlessly into the daily routines of doctors and specialists.”

Ritchelle Drilon

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Ritchelle is a Content Producer for Healthcare Channel, Australia’s premier resource of information for healthcare.

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