Fixing the Biggest Problems in Healthcare

Healthcare is broken. If you believe that statement and you are building a company that should be part of the engine that fixes it, read on.

There are a large number of things that can be improved, but first and foremost, we need to understand that we do not have a "healthcare" system. It is designed to support your needs when you get sick, not keep you well. It's time to fix that.

At Teladoc, we built an engine capable of delivering physicians to patients in minutes, for a fraction of the cost of an in-person visit. Impact: Access, Efficiency, and Cost.

On the other side of the coin, Physicians (providers) working inside the Teladoc engine could work fewer hours per week and make more money. Impact: Access, Efficiency, and Income.

The pieces are in place so that we can now change everything. Telemedicine and digital health have reached a watershed moment. After years of shouting into the empty forest, suddenly everyone is listening. The industry is in full acceleration and entrenched in the historic shift from emergence to growth. Consolidation is happening all around us, every day. Tens of thousands of lives are now being saved by the very industry that Boards of Medical Examiners were relentlessly trying to shut down just a year ago.

But, the solutions delivered by Teladoc and the telemedicine industry are just the tip of the iceberg. What you are witnessing now is just the beginning. 

We still have an overly expensive architecture that only treats the sick. It is therefore, not a healthcare system, but a “SickCare gimcrack.” Lowering cost AND keeping people healthy well past reaching a hundred years old, is now within the scope of technology and delivery. 

For the past six months, a team of telemedicine and digital health pioneers and I have been working on a solution that has begun paving the road to replace our broken, costly SickCare gimcrack with a true affordable healthcare jet engine.

As of today, some of the most significant and recognized players in telemedicine and digital health have joined this team, and we are looking for others. Are you one of them? Do you have a company that should be part of the engine that changes everything?

We can define consolidation and its impact. Today there are thousands of telehealth companies in various stages of development. In a few years, most of the early stage companies, now excited by their own growth, access to capital, and high valuations, will be gone. DEAD. The vast majority will be simply crushed out of existence. The fight for dominance has begun. In a few short years, the top three or four players will control up to 50% of the entire industry, while the remainder will be anemically held by less than a dozen more.

I have lived through this twice. Once in solar and the other time in the internet. In the 1990s, I built an Internet company. Those were exciting times. Boom times. Investors were encircling us and throwing money at our deals. Sound familiar? Many of my colleagues rejected great offers because they believed they had the next “billion-dollar deal.” In almost all cases, they were wrong, and they ended up with nothing.

The lessons of the late 90s apply today. History teaches us the cycles of a new industry. In 2002, Harvard Business Review published a study on the topic. We have seen example after example of how emergence-to-growth plays out in a new industry. Just look at manufacturing, automobiles, airlines, telecom, internet and solar power. The list could go on and on, and the pathway is always the same. Emergence spawns Growth, which leads to Consolidation. There is a reason smart people study history…

Restated

There are two things that need to happen, and our team is intent on delivering:

1. We want to cherry pick the best deals and work with management to make sure they survive the coming, crushing, consolidation, and
2. Collaboratively build the jet engine of a truly affordable healthcare system that delivers real care for maintaining health.

We have begun this process and have a few companies and investors onboard, but are actively seeking additional investors and entrepreneurs. Please reach out to me on LinkedIn so we can schedule a meeting to discuss.