I created a new website – SlackerHealth.com – focused on bringing together services to improve the patient experience.
After spending most of my 20+ years in healthcare, I’ve seen how many gaps there are in the industry. It’s especially true in the delivery of patient services.
And while technology innovation in many industries serves to lower costs and improve efficiency, we just haven’t seen that in healthcare. It’s just the opposite. Medical inflation rises at 2 to 3 times CPI and wage increases. Which means that if you’re getting less than a 6% to 7% pay increase every year, you’re actually making less money, net of healthcare costs.
As new technologies hit the market, costs just continue to rise. The solutions provided so far are generally more targeted at shifting costs between the participants – patients, providers, payers, employers. But unless we actually lower the overall cost, none of these solutions is viable over the longer term.
For a long time, I’ve wanted to build something to start tackling these challenges. Slacker Health is a first step in that process.
Much more to come but it’s a start.
Is this the new venture you’ve been alluding to lately, Dave? Is the plan to derive revenue from the service providers who subscribe when you connect a client/patient with them? So is it a sort of brokerage service where you connect clients with the most appropriate provider? I look forward to seeing it come together and take off. When it becomes the darling of Wall St can I tell everyone I knew you when you first started it?
Hey, Martin.
This is one of the businesses that I’ve been talking about on the site.
When I started thinking about this concept, I actually intended to build product. But I also realized how long that will take.
In the interim, there are high quality companies with products that fit nicely with the concept and I can connect users with those companies.
Longer term, I still expect to make money through new products still to be developed.