In a classic study of Dow Chemical workers, employees who were present but sick actually cost the company more than employees who were out sick. And Dow Chemical employees with common illnesses like depression, anxiety, migraines, respiratory illnesses, arthritis, diabetes and back and neck pain had performance levels 10 to 20 percent lower than healthy counterparts.
A few months back, I was fortunate enough to participate in an executive health program. It was a two day intensive where every test imaginable was preformed. The doctors were great and the experience was even better. I left the two day intensive thinking about ways to democratize this service and allow anyone access. I was lucky enough to share some of these thoughts over dinner last night with a few of my doctors. Here are some takeaways:
Leveraging the archaic healthcare pay-systems to ones advantage
We all know how money flows in the healthcare system, right? Wrong. This is incredibly complex and generally unknown to the patient. Are there ways to allow certain cohorts to pay for others' access? An example would be a traditional e-commerce subscription model where the premium members would pay out of pocket for certain services while driving costs down the bottom of the funnel to those in need.
Building network effects that allow scalability across the US
It's a compelling argument to make when you think about allowing access to these white glove services. Why can't we all experience it? Simply put, it's not a common service accessible to the majority of the population. Most universities have these programs in house and charge the patient out of pocket. Where does insurance come into play and how can one create a way to share these experiences with friends, family and coworkers. The network effects in the healthcare space is massive and thinking about simple ways to drive that adoption really stats on the aggregation of healthcare providers over onboarding patients while thinking 10,000 ft. above and connecting any patient with any healthcare professional in a given area no matter what university they sit within.
Building a two-side marketplace with an emphasis on supply-side economics
This is as important as unpacking the healthcare pay-systems. In order to achieve an optimal outcome (patient success), a program needs to think of this as a product in which their business is hyper-focused on being able to onboard and vet the best healthcare professionals, match those same professionals against patient profiles and execute an 'on-demand' experience back to the patient. The controlled chaos (solved by technology) behind the scenes is the secret sauce and how one optimizes a patients schedule, routes to the doctors offices, navigation/execution of payment and overall experience will be able to match this high quality supply with tremendous demand while capturing the proper economics throughout the funnel.
There is a lot to unpack here. Many more conversations with leading experts need to be had. My gut reaction from last nights dinner leads me to believe the executive heath program sector is ripe for innovation. What sets this idea apart from others is being able to align oneself with a top-tier healthcare provider that puts the patient outcomes before any of the economics mentioned prior while taking learnings from the digital age and driving hard at unlocking value for both sides of this marketplace.
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