WeWork for doctors? Plus, Amazon wants to mine patient data and nurses turn to side jobs

The market for co-working spaces is booming, but there’s one segment that has been slower to embrace the trend: health care providers.

Most co-working spaces aren’t set up to deal with the special equipment, hazardous waste handling and privacy regulations that medical offices require, creating a high barrier to entry for players like WeWork. (WeWork, incidentally, has signaled its interest in health care by focusing on cancer researchers and oncology companies.)

That’s where the opportunity comes in for the handful of startups focused on creating co-working spaces for medical professionals.

WeShareMD has five offices in San Diego with plans to expand throughout the West Coast and beyond.

“You get a ready-made practice without having to deal with the personnel and the office space,” said George Scopetta, a real estate investor who is the company’s co-founder and CEO. He estimated that doctors typically spend about $150,000 to $200,000 setting up a new office. Those costs add up for doctors who split their time between different locations, whether to expand into other zip codes or balance surgical procedures and outpatient visits.

With their costs rising, a growing number of physicians are leaving private practice. Some have accepted salaried positions in hospitals, while others have joined large, multispecialty medical groups or attempted to increase their negotiating clout by banding together in an independent practice association.

But all of those solutions require doctors to give up their autonomy to some degree. That’s why R2 Medical Group wants to offer shared business services, like legal, accounting and finance, to physicians who use its offices.

“This is for physicians who still want to manage their own practice … without having to answer to someone above them,” said Dr. Reza Mirali, a plastic surgeon who is president of R2 Medical Group. “This is a little salvage line for private practice.”

R2 has its first location in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just eight miles from Washington and in a county with a high concentration of physicians. As the business grows, Mirali envisions offering other services like an onsite laboratory and imaging equipment. Certain rooms could be set aside for outpatient procedures while others are set up as exam rooms.

The biggest challenge Mirali says he faces is cultural: doctors still think they need to have their name on the door and diplomas on the wall. But patients don’t seem to have the same attachment to physical office space, Mirali said, adding that electronic displays can help customize each office.

- Beth Kutscher, senior news editor at LinkedIn

What do you think? Could co-working spaces give doctors more flexibility? Share your thoughts in the comments.

News I’m Watching

1. Amazon gets into the health information business. The e-commerce giant is selling software to doctors and hospitals to mine electronic health records, in a bid to improve treatment and lower costs, according to the WSJ. Doing this squares Amazon off against companies like IBM Watson Health and UnitedHealth Group’s Optum and furthers the company’s footprint in the health care industry. UnitedHealth Group, for that matter, said it plans to launch a personal health record for its members.

2. Nurses turn to side jobs to make ends meet. Dozens of nursing professionals told LinkedIn that they take per diem and overtime work in order to help pay for their cost of living and student loans. This isn’t a new trend; nurses have always worked extra jobs. But new research has found that one hour of overtime can mean more burnout and less collaboration with other clinicians, and nurses say they are increasingly overworked and worried about safe staffing ratios.

3. The ethics of gene editing move into the mainstream. After news broke that a Chinese researcher reportedly edited embryos for seven couples, with an aim to make the babies immune to HIV infection, China cracked down on the research following an outcry. "To engage in therapeutic germline editing, if that is in fact what happened, without transparency, public consensus, or (apparently)  review by a research ethics board, is deeply concerning," Carol Weil, program director for ethical and regulatory affairs for the National Cancer Institute, said in a LinkedIn comment this week.

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What’s your take on this week’s stories? Will co-working spaces encourage more doctors to open their own practices? Is Amazon’s data-mining venture the right approach? Should nurses make more money? What's next for gene editing? Share your thoughts in the comments, using #TheCheckup.